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Studies  of  the  Great  War 


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Studies  of  the  Great  War 

What  Each  Nation  has  at  Stake 


By 
NEWELL  DWIGHT  HILLIS 


NEW     YORK  CHICAGO  TORONTO 

Fleming     H.     Revell     Company 
LONDON  AND  EDINBURGH 


Copyright,  1915,  by 
FLEMING  II.  REVELL  COMPANY 


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Foreword 

NOT  since  1861,  when  the  Union  was 
threatened,  has  our  country  witnessed 
days  so  dark.  War  vultures,  with  black 
wings,  brood  the  earth  as  couriers  of  poverty, 
sorrow  and  death.  During  many  months, 
multitudes  have  known  but  one  colour — 
black,  have  had  but  one  song — a  funeral 
dirge. 

More  men  were  killed  on  the  field  of  bat- 
tle during  the  first  twenty  weeks  of  war  than 
there  were  people  in  the  whole  world  in 
the  time  of  the  Flood.  History  holds  the 
story  of  many  wars,  but  history  tells  us  that 
this  is  the  first  one  that  has  involved  all  of  the 
five  continents  of  our  earth.  Already  fifteen 
million  men  are  in  battle,  or  preparing  for 
conflict.  The  results  of  the  war  are  manifest 
through  the  crippling  of  international  trade 
and  banking,  and  the  practical  destruction 
of  Twentieth  Century  commerce.  The  time 
has  not  yet  come  for  entire  moral  appraise- 
ments, with  distribution  of  praise  and  blame. 
The  ideal  is  neutrality,  and  the  postpone- 
ment of  judgment  until  all  the  facts  are  in. 
5 


Foreword 

It  is  easy  to  preserve  that  attitude  of  mind 
so  long  as  one  nation  charges  crime  and  an- 
other denies  the  charge ;  but  the  moment  one 
nation,  through  its  Prime  Minister,  "  con- 
fesses "  guilt,  saying,  "  We  have  done  a 
wrong  in  breaking  our  treaty,  but  later  on 
we  will  repair  it," — then  it  becomes  logically 
necessary  to  bring  the  verdict  up  to  date. 

In  general  terras,  war  is  the  negation  of 
the  Ten  Commandments.  Alchemy,  witch- 
craft, astrology,  duels  and  war  belong  alike  to 
the  cave-man,  and  the  era  of  savages.  God 
made  Europe  as  an  Eden  garden,  where  the 
tree  of  life  ripens  purple  clusters  for  hungry 
pilgrims,  but  to-day  men  have  split  the 
boughs  of  the  life-giving  tree  into  spears,  and 
fed  its  blossoms  to  their  war  horses.  Rulers 
have  despised  peace,  and  refused  good  will 
to  their  brother  men.  When  hate  and  war 
are  rampant,  the  one  duty  of  the  hour  is  to 
teach  love,  peace  and  justice.  When  the  fur- 
row is  open,  even  though  by  the  hot  plough- 
shares of  war,  that  is  the  time  to  sow  the  seed. 

When  Jesus  was  in  Jerusalem,  He  did  not 
talk  about  the  events  that  once  happened  to 
Moses  in  Egypt, — He  studied  the  signs  of 
the  times,  and  interpreted  the  way  of  God 
to  men  in  Jerusalem.  In  the  interests  of 
6 


Foreword 

busy  men  whose  life  is  crowded,  during  ten 
successive  Sunday  nights,  from  October  4  to 
December  27,  1914,  I  roughly  sketched  the 
stories  of  the  nations  now  engaged  in  the 
greatest  battle  that  ever  shook  our  earth. 
Keports  of  the  addresses  were  published  in 
the  Brooklyn  Daily  Eagle.  The  fact  that 
one  of  them  called  forth  over  five  hundred 
letters,  and  hundreds  of  clippings  and  edi- 
torials, from  practically  every  State  in  the 
Union,  indicates  that  American  people  are 
deeply  interested  in  the  moral  interpretation 
of  the  events  of  this  great  war. 

I  have  somewhat  revised  the  published  re- 
ports, confessedly  hasty  and  incomplete,  but 
have  not  attempted  to  chronicle  the  rapid 
changes  of  events  to  the  present  time,  since 
the  object  was  rather  to  picture  certain  large 
features  of  history,  to  gain  general  views  of 
the  characteristics  of  the  warring  nations, 
and  to  set  forth  some  moralities  of  the  crisis. 

NEWELL  DWIGHT  HILLIS. 
April,  1915. 

NOTE. — Of  course,  the  Army  estimates,  in  lists  of 
"Resources"  closing  each  chapter,  are  far  below  the 
actual  numbers  gathered  under  war  pressure. 


Contents 

I.  Germany's  Growth  :  Her  Problems  of 

Expansion    .          .          .          .          .n 

II.  France :  Her  Contribution  to  the  World  ; 

What  Her  People  Are  Fighting  For        43 

III.  England's   Place   Among   the  Nations : 

Her  Relations  to  Germany      .          .       71 

IV.  Brave  Little  Belgium  :   Why  the  World 

Sympathizes  With  Her  .          .         .'97 

V.  The  New  Russia :  Her  Ambition  for  a 

Seaport         .          .          .          .          .117 

VI.  The  Unspeakable  Turk  :  An  Alien  in 

Europe         .         .         .         .         .139 

VII.  Italy  Old  and  New:  Her  Ambitions    .     161 

VIII.  Holland   and   Germany:    The    Mouth 

of  the  Rhine  .          .          .          .189 

IX.  Austria-Hungary     and     the     Coming 

United  States  of  Balkany       .          .215 

X.  The  Verdict  of  the   American   People 

Upon  Militarism  and  Autocracy       .     239 

Index 263 


Germany's  Growth: 
Her  Problems  of  Expansion 


Germany,  as  known  to  the  older  generation, 
was  a  country  peopled  with  philosophers,  poets, 
composers,  slow  and  sleepy  officials  and  backward 
peasants ;  it  was  an  aesthetical,  sentimental,  day- 
dreaming land.  Modern  Germany  is  matter-of- 
fact,  hard-headed,  calculating,  businesslike,  totally 
devoid  of  sentimentality,  and  sometimes  even  of 
sentiment,  and  very  up-to-date.  .  .  .  New 
Germany  is  an  enlarged  Prussia.  ...  It  should 
not  be  forgotten  that  those  Germans  who  used  to 
be  considered  typical  representatives  of  Germany, 
such  as  Goethe,  Schiller,  Lessing,  Wieland,Jean 
Paul,  Schlegel,  Uhland,  Lenau,  Hegel,  Fichte, 
Beethoven,  Mozart,  Haydn,  belonged  to  old 
Germany,  and  were  non-Prussians. 

J.  ELLIS  BARKER. 
"  Modern  Germany"  1909. 


GERMANY'S  GROWTH :  HER  PROB- 
LEMS OF  EXPANSION 

CENTURIES  ago  Plato  made  a  distinc- 
tion between  the  occasions  of  war,  and 
the  causes  of  war.  The  occasions  of  war  lie 
upon  the  surface,  and  are  known  and  read  of 
all  men,  while  the  causes  of  war  are  embedded 
in  racial  antagonism,  in  political  and  eco- 
nomic controversies.  Narrative  historians 
portray  the  occasions  of  war;  philosophic 
historians  give  us  the  secret  and  hidden 
causes  of  conflict.  Thus  the  spark  of  fire 
that  fails  upon  powder  is  the  occasion  of  an 
explosion,  but  the  cause  of  the  havoc  is  the 
relation  between  charcoal,  nitre  and  salt- 
petre. The  occasion  of  our  Civil  War  was 
the  firing  upon  Fort  Sumter ;  the  cause  was 
the  collision  between  the  ideals  of  the  Union 
presented  by  Daniel  Webster,  and  of  States 
Rights,  taught  by  John  C.  Calhoun.  The 
occasion  of  the  American  Revolution  was  the 
Stamp  Tax ;  the  cause  was  the  conviction  of 
13 


Germany's  Growth 

our  forefathers  that  men  who  had  freedom  of 
worship  carried  also  the  capacity  for  self- 
government.  The  occasion  of  the  French 
Revolution  was  the  purchase  of  a  diamond 
necklace  for  Marie  Antoinette  at  a  moment 
when  the  treasury  was  exhausted  ;  the  cause 
of  the  revolution  was  a  revolt  against  Feu- 
dalism. 

To-day,  thoughtful  men  must  discriminate 
between  the  occasions  of  the  great  European 
war  and  the  causes  of  that  awful  conflict  that 
is  now  shaking  the  whole  earth.  The  spark 
that  fell  into  the  powder  magazine  was  the 
assassination  of  the  heir  to  the  Austrian 
throne,  but  the  causes  and  roots  of  the  war 
are  in  far-off  racial  antagonisms  and  economic 
conflicts.  As  for  Germany,  the  cause  of  the 
war  is  found  in  the  desire  of  her  people  for  a 
larger  "  place  in  the  sun,"  through  control  of 
the  Belgian  Scheldt  and  the  mouth  of  the 
Rhine,  possession  of  the  iron  mines  of  the 
French  Briey,  and  in  her  conviction  that 
England  has  no  right  to  claim  to  be  the 
mistress  of  the  seas.  As  for  France,  the 
cause  of  the  war  is  the  instinct  of  self-preser- 
vation, a  desire  to  recover  the  lost  provinces 
of  Alsace  and  Lorraine,  and  her  determina- 
tion to  develop  her  iron  mines  and  become  a 
14 


Her  Problems  of  Expansion 

manufacturing  nation.  As  for  Austria,  the 
cause  of  the  war  is  her  fear  of  the  coming 
United  States  of  Balkany,  with  the  certain 
progressive  slicing  away  of  her  territory. 
As  for  Russia,  the  cause  of  the  war  is  her 
desire  to  obtain  the  Bosphorus,  with  a  port 
open  all  the  year  round. 

As  for  England,  our  motherland  is  fighting 
to  recover  her  sense  of  security.  During  the 
Napoleonic  wars,  the  second  William  Pitt 
explained  the  quadrupling  of  the  taxes,  the 
increase  of  the  navy,  and  the  sending  of  an 
English  army  against  France,  by  emphasizing 
the  necessity  of  "  preserving  England's  sense 
of  security."  Five  years  ago  England  lost 
her  sense  of  security,  and  began  to  fear  a 
German  invasion.  To-day,  England  is  seek- 
ing not  to  preserve  but  to  recover  that  lost 
sense.  England  and  France  and  Belgium 
propose  now  to  secure  their  ends  by  destroy- 
ing Germany's  ironclads,  demobilizing  her 
army,  wiping  out  her  forts,  and  enlarging 
Belgium  as  a  buffer  state  between  France 
and  Germany.  The  occasions  of  the  war 
vary,  as  stated  in  each  White  Paper,  and  Blue 
Paper  and  Yellow  Paper,  but  the  causes  of 
the  war  abide  in  economic  struggles  and  racial 
antagonisms. 

15 


Germany's  Growth 

Because  Germany  set  the  battle-lines  in 
array,  it  seems  logical  that  we  should  begin 
these  studies  with  a  review  of  the  rise  of  the 
New  Germany.  In  the  realm  of  industry,  it 
is  possible  that  Germany  now  leads  the  rest 
of  the  world.  She  produces  larger  harvests 
for  a  given  number  of  acres,  manufactures 
her  goods  with  less  waste,  maintains  a  wage 
that  is  not  higher  but  is  steadier  than  that 
of  other  peoples,  secures  a  higher  rate  of 
longevity  among  her  workers,  has  succeeded 
in  safeguarding  her  toilers  against  the  wor- 
ries incident  to  accident,  illness  and  old  age, 
and  has  lifted  her  working  people  out  of 
illiteracy  to  a  higher  average  intellectual 
level  than  that  known  to  any  other  nation. 
At  the  same  time,  strangely  enough,  under 
the  influence  of  Prussia,  the  German  people 
still  cling  to  the  divine  right  of  kings,  clothe 
the  Kaiser  with  autocratic  power,  and  while 
giving  the  elected  representatives  of  the  peo- 
ple in  the  Reichstag  the  outer  form  of 
government,  limit  the  Reichstag  to  the  work 
of  a  debating  society.  Nearly  three  cen- 
turies have  passed  since  Oliver  Cromwell  won 
for  England  the  essentials  of  democracy,  and 
one  hundred  and  twenty  years  have  passed 
since  the  fall  of  feudalism  in  France,  and  yet 
16 


Her  Problems  of  Expansion 

now,  in  1914,  Germany  is  not  within  sight 
of  the  day  that  will  bring  full  manhood 
suffrage.  In  the  industrial  realm  Germany 
is  creating  wealth  faster  than  any  other 
nation  in  Europe,  and  this  notwithstanding 
the  handicap  of  thin,  sandy  soil  in  Prussia, 
low  grade  ore  and  coal,  and  the  fact  that  she 
is,  comparatively  with  others,  shut  off  from 
the  sea  and  surrounded  by  active  competitors. 
The  story  of  Germany's  growth  makes  up 
a  fascinating  page  in  the  world's  industrial 
history.  Her  efficiency  is  indicated  by  the 
fact  that,  if  the  United  States  sells  raw  cot- 
ton to  Germany,  Germany  sells  us  finished 
products.  Her  foreign  trade  is  nearly  twice 
as  large  as  ours,  and  yet  our  Republic  has 
thirty  millions  more  people  and  twelve  times 
the  territory.  What  is  more  surprising  is  the 
fact  that  having  no  ocean  port  but  only  her 
two  outlets  on  the  North  Sea,  Germany  has 
built  up  a  vast  navy,  and  made  her  shipping 
lines  second  only  to  those  of  England,  while 
we  have  an  enormous  coast  line,  and  what — 
with  two  oceans,  the  Gulf,  and  the  St.  Law- 
rence River — is  to  all  intents  and  purposes  an 
island,  and  yet  we  are  a  nation  without 
ships.  So  rapidly  has  Germany  developed 
that  to-day  twice  as  many  people  in  Europe 
17 


Germany's  Growth 

speak  German  as  French,  while  one  hundred 
years  ago  four  times  as  many  people  in 
Europe  spoke  French  as  German.  All  iron 
and  steel  men  are  agreed  that  if  Germany 
had  as  good  coking  coal  and  iron  ore  as  our 
Connellsville  coal  and  the  Mesaba  ores,  she 
would  drive  our  iron  men  either  into  bank- 
ruptcy or  into  new  and  more  efficient  methods 
of  smelting.  In  this  country  capital  and 
labour  have  not  yet  learned  to  do  team  work, 
while  in  Germany  the  people  are  disciplined, 
trained  in  intelligence,  and  they  know  how 
to  appreciate  and  follow  steadfast  leader- 
ship. The  German  industrial  host  marches, 
not  as  a  mob  but  as  a  solid  army ;  our  work- 
ing people  through  the  jealousy  of  labour 
leaders  are  broken  up  into  separate  guerilla 
bands,  until  the  union  men  and  the  non-union 
men  fight  almost  as  bitterly  as  the  German 
and  the  French  soldiers  now  struggling  unto 
death  in  the  trenches  of  Northern  France. 

Suddenly,  Germany's  competitors  have 
waked  up  to  discover  that  the  typical  Ger- 
man is  not  only  a  thinker,  but  also  a  sturdy 
young  manufacturer,  an  excellent  business 
man,  and  a  soldier,  whose  chief  prowess  has 
not  been  exerted  in  warfare.  Indeed,  the 
progress  of  Germany  since  1870  is  the  won- 
18 


Her  Problems  of  Expansion 

der  of  the  world.  Forty  years  ago,  Russia 
was  the  outstanding  European  power,  but 
her  war  with  Japan  left  Russia  weakened, 
and  Germany  became  the  great  Continental 
force.  In  1870  she  had  forty  millions  of 
people, — she  now  has  sixty- eight  millions. 
In  1870  she  had  an  army  about  equal  to  that 
of  France ;  to-day  she  has  three  million  men 
in  her  First  and  Second  Reserves  and  two 
million  in  the  Third  Reserve.  Her  army  of 
trained  citizen-soldiers  is  larger  than  that  of 
Alexander,  plus  Julius  Caesar's,  plus  Na- 
poleon's, with  a  million  of  Grant's  men.  In 
1870  Germany  had  no  navy  worth  talking 
about.  To-day  her  North  German  Lloyd 
and  her  Hamburg-American  fleets  are  the 
largest  in  the  world,  while  at  the  rate  at 
which  she  is  building  battle-ships  she  may, 
within  ten  years,  have  a  navy  equal  to  that 
of  England. 

Forty  years  ago  Germany  was  an  agri- 
cultural country  that  did  a  little  manufac- 
turing :  to-day  she  is  essentially  an  industrial 
nation.  England  still  leads  in  the  cotton 
and  woolen  industries  and  in  ship-building, 
but  Germany  leads  England  in  the  produc- 
tion of  steel,  machinery,  chemicals,  and  elec- 
tricity, and  is  rapidly  rivalling  England  in 
19 


Germany's  Growth 

all  European  markets.  She  now  has  fifty 
per  cent,  more  man-power  than  England, 
which  means  fifty  per  cent,  more  wealth-pro- 
ducing power. 

But  what  is  more  important  is  that  her 
population  is  growing  nine  hundred  thousand 
a  year,  while  England  is  growing  very 
slowly.  Moreover,  in  Germany  work  is  so 
abundant  and  wages  so  steady  that  she  loses 
only  thirty  thousand  people  a  year  through 
emigration ;  while  Great  Britain's  sons  are 
migrating  in  an  army  of  four  hundred  and 
fifty  thousand  every  year.  Within  ten  years, 
Germany's  population  bids  fair  to  equal  that 
of  France  and  England  combined.  Her  army 
is  already  larger  than  that  of  the  two  countries, 
and  she  believes  that  in  a  very  few  years  her 
army  and  navy  will  give  her  two  strong  hands 
where  she  now  has  one. 

Be  the  reasons  what  they  may,  a  wave  of 
patriotism  has  swept  over  the  German 
people.  These  sixty-eight  millions,  during 
the  past  months,  have  had  but  one  mind  and 
one  heart,  and  that  heart  is  beating  high 
with  hope  and  ambition.  When  France 
erected  her  great  motto, — "  Liberty,  Fra- 
ternity, and  Equality," — that  motto  wrought 
itself  out  through  the  French  Revolution, 
20 


Her  Problems  of  Expansion 

and,  despite  reactions  towards  imperialism, 
has  resulted  in  a  stable  republic.  There  was 
a  time  when  England  had  a  motto, — "  No 
Bishop,  No  King " ;  when  that  watchword 
had  worked  its  way  through,  Charles  had 
lost  his  head,  feudalism  had  gone  down,  and 
democracy  in  England  had  taken  the  place 
of  autocracy — still  maintained  through  roy- 
alty ruling  under  law.  There  came  a  time 
also  in  our  country  when  the  colonists  took 
up  a  watchword, — "No  Taxation  without 
Kepresentation," — and  it  ended  with  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  and  the  Re- 
public. Germany  now  has  a  watchword, — 
"  Duty,  Obedience,  Work — for  God  and  Na- 
tive Land." 

This  is  the  most  serious  motto  that  any 
nation  ever  adopted ;  the  words  are  the 
greatest  words  in  the  vocabulary  of  human 
life.  Duty  ?  The  path  of  duty  is  the  way 
of  glory.  Obedience  ?  Obedience  to  natural 
law  makes  man  the  ruler  of  every  force  in 
land  and  sea  and  sky.  Work  ?  That  builds 
factories,  enriches  fields,  founds  cities,  spreads 
commerce  over  the  earth.  When  these  great 
words  have  fully  wrought  out  their  destiny 
the  Kaiser  thinks  Germany  may  have  a  hun- 
dred millions  of  people.  A  nation  that  is 

21 


Germany's  Growth 

scientific  in  its  industry,  that  saves  waste, 
and  is  rearing  its  boys  and  girls  upon  such 
words  as  "  Duty,  Obedience  and  "Work  for 
God  and  Native  Land "  must  be  reckoned 
with. 

And  now  that  Germany  is  producing  more 
goods  than  her  own  people  need,  she  wants 
colonies  to  which  she  can  sell  her  surplus 
goods.  Although  the  Americas  and  the 
European  colonies  are  open  to  her  trade,  es- 
pecially those  of  Great  Britain,  which  are 
free  to  all  the  world,  Germany  yearns  to 
control  as  well  as  to  benefit  by  colonial  com- 
merce. And  she  craves  also  greater  outlets 
for  her  goods. 

Yet  for  years  Germany  has  been  shut  off 
from  the  sea  at  Trieste  on  the  Adriatic  and 
at  Marseilles  on  the  Mediterranean ;  shut 
off  from  the  North  Sea  by  Holland  on  the 
west.  Hitherto  neighbouring  nations  have 
wanted  Holland  and  Belgium  as  buffer 
states,  and  France,  England  and  Prussia 
with  Russia  and  Austria  agreed  so  to  main- 
tain them.  True,  Germany  has  the  great  ports 
of  Hamburg  on  the  Elbe,  and  Bremen  on  the 
Eser,  but  the  Rhine,  her  greatest  river,  flows 
into  the  North  Sea  at  Rotterdam,  Holland. 
Of  course,  our  people  could  not  carry  on  their 
22 


Her  Problems  of  Expansion 

trade  with  Canada  owning  the  mouth  of  the 
Hudson  and  Manhattan  Island.  We  could 
not  do  our  work  with  Mexico  owning  the 
mouth  of  the  Mississippi  Kiver,  and  all  the 
Mississippi  states  paying  tribute  to  Mexico 
at  New  Orleans.  France  could  not  survive 
with  the  mouth  of  the  Seine  owned  by  Spain 
or  the  mouth  of  the  Khone  owned  by  Italy. 
"What,  then,  is  Germany  to  do  ? 

Consider  what  is  involved  in  a  growth 
of  nine  hundred  thousand  people  a  year  ! 
Think  of  the  manufacturers  of  Germany  who 
are  so  busy  that  she  has  to  import  seven 
hundred  and  twenty  thousand  working 
people  in  the  summer  to  reap  her  crops ;  let- 
ting these  Kussians  and  Hungarians  and 
Italians  return  home  in  the  late  autumn.  If 
the  steam  piles  up  in  the  kettle  and  there  is 
no  vent  there  is  apt  to  be  an  explosion.  The 
steam  put  to  nine  hundred  thousand  pounds 
pressure  per  year  is  piling  up  in  the  German 
teakettle,  and  when  the  Czar,  King  George 
and  the  Queen  and  the  President  climb  on 
top  of  the  teakettle,  they  may  not  be  tempt- 
ing Providence,  but  they  certainly  are  tempt- 
ing steam  and  water  and  fire. 

South  and  southeast  of  Munich  are  two 
Austrian  provinces  whose  people  speak  the 
23 


Germany's  Growth 

German  language.  Will  the  expansive  forces 
of  Germany  push  these  provinces  aside  until 
Germany  has  access  for  her  commerce  to  the 
Mediterranean  and  the  Adriatic  ?  Will  Ger- 
many, when  she  has  her  navy  completed, 
put  her  soldiers  into  Holland  and  send  the 
Rhine  "unvexed  to  the  sea"?  Will  Hol- 
land grant  an  economic  and  customs  agree- 
ment ?  Or  will  there  be,  ultimately,  political 
union  of  Holland  and  Germany?  Soon 
Germany  will  have  one  hundred  millions, 
and  at  that  time  England  will  have  fifty, 
and  France  thirty-five.  The  question  now 
is  this :  How  long  will  one  pound  continue 
to  weigh  as  much  as  two  pounds  ? 

Germany  says  she  must  have  room  to 
expand.  The  land  around  Berlin  is  a  sandy 
plain,  her  coal  is  of  low  grade,  her  soil  is  of 
poor  quality ;  and  yet  by  her  saving  of  waste, 
by  untiring  industry,  thrift,  and  economy, 
she  is  creating  wealth  each  year  fifty  per 
cent,  more  rapidly  than  England.  Mean- 
while, she  is  building  a  railroad  down  to 
Bagdad  and  wants  to  reach  the  Persian 
Gulf.  ISTo  man  who  has  travelled  through 
the  Balkan  country  can  but  realize  that 
many  things  are  to  happen  after  the  death 
of  the  Emperor  Francis  Joseph.  Who  knows 
24 


Her  Problems  of  Expansion 

but  that  the  Germanic  provinces  of  Austria, 
including  Vienna,  may  become  the  Kaiser's 
provinces,  so  that  the  Hungarian  Empire 
will  have  its  capital  at  Budapest  ?  For 
observant  men,  who  have  eyes  to  see, 
Kussia  at  this  moment  is  elbowing  the  little 
province  aside  and  moving  steadily  towards 
the  Bosphorus,  to  crowd  the  Turk.  After  a 
while,  the  Turk  will  move  bag  and  baggage 
out  of  Europe. 

London  has  been  so  long  the  financial 
centre  of  the  world,  and  England  the  richest 
country,  that  it  seems  impossible  to  imagine 
that  Germany  is,  or  soon  may  be,  the  rich- 
est state  in  Europe.  But  when  an  English 
economist,  Barker,'  analyzes  the  property  of 
his  own  country,  England,  and  puts  over 
against  that  estimate  the  property  of  Ger- 
many and  arrives  at  the  conclusion  that 
Germany  is  the  richer  country,  it  gives  the 
shock  of  surprise.  The  reasons  for  the  con- 
clusion are  not  far  to  seek.  England  has 
forty-five  millions  of  people,  and  Germany 
sixty-eight  millions,  and  this  means  that 
Germany  has  fifty  per  cent,  more  man- 
power, or  wealth-producing  power. 

England's  forty-five  millions  of  people  are 

"  Modern  Germany,"  by  J.  Ellis  Barker. 
25 


Germany's  Growth 

poorly  employed,  and  nine  per  cent,  of  her 
population  are  practically  always  out  of 
work.  Germany's  sixty-eight  millions  of 
people  are  practically  fully  employed.  Dur- 
ing the  past  summer,  rather  than  take  her 
workmen  out  of  her  factories,  she  imported 
seven  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  men  out 
of  Kussia,  Hungary,  Austria,  and  Italy  and 
adjacent  states.  And  this  is  not  a  mere 
estimate,  because  Germany  compels  the  regis- 
tration of  every  visitor  immediately  upon 
crossing  the  German  frontier,  and  every 
Saturday  night  Germany  knows  to  a  man 
the  precise  number  of  foreigners  within  her 
borders.  And  while  Germany's  workmen  are 
probably  the  best  educated  working  people 
in  the  world,  she  has  the  biggest  machines, 
the  healthiest  human  tools,  and  is  the  best 
organized. 

But  there  is  another  test  still  more  de- 
cisive. France's  public  debt  represents  one 
hundred  and  fifty-three  dollars  per  man, 
woman,  and  child,  and  France  has  only  a 
few  state  railroads  to  pay  her  debt,  being 
dependent  upon  the  taxation  of  her  people 
for  her  income.  Britain  owes  a  national 
debt  of  ninety  dollars  per  capita.  While  a 
judicious  combination  of  paying  off  and  re- 
26 


Her  Problems  of  Expansion 

funding  has  kept  her  obligations  strong  in 
the  market,  they  are  a  constant  drain  on  the 
nation's  wealth.  Now  Germany's  debt  is 
only  sixty  dollars  per  individual,  but  the 
German  state  government  owns  the  railways 
and  forests  and  mines.  The  value  of  her 
government  railway  stock  is  established  by 
the  dividends  the  state  makes  the  railroads 
pay.  These  state  railways  have  so  high  a 
value  that  after  half  of  her  railways  and 
forests  were  sold,  Germany  could  pay  every 
dollar  of  her  indebtedness,  and  have  the 
other  half  left  to  support  her  army  and 
build  her  navy. 

What  did  England  and  France  do  with 
the  four  billions  of  dollars  that  they  have 
borrowed  and  used?  They  invested  it  in 
battle-ships  that  will  soon  be  scrap-iron,  in 
fortresses,  cannon,  and  guns  that  will  rust 
out.  And  what  has  Germany  done  with 
her  billions  that  she  borrowed  ?  She  put 
much  of  the  money  into  factories,  forests, 
railways  and  mines  that  are  steadily  enhanc- 
ing. During  the  last  twenty  years,  England's 
income,  through  taxation,  has  decreased,  and 
Germany's  has  more  than  doubled.  These 
are  important  facts. 

Another  test  of  the  greatness  and  pros- 
27 


Germany's  Growth 

perity  of  a  nation  is  found  in  an  analysis  of 
its  work,  wages  and  immigration.  When 
work  is  abundant,  wages  firm,  and  times 
good,  men  do  not  migrate.  When  work  is 
scarce,  wages  low,  and  times  are  bad,  the 
working  people  migrate  by  the  ship-load. 
Now  the  survey  of  the  industrial  condition 
of  England  shows  that  during  the  last  twenty 
years,  nine  per  cent,  of  the  people  have  been 
always  out  of  employment.  It  is  estimated 
that  there  are  always  two  per  cent,  of  the 
people  out  of  work,  in  connection  with  tran- 
sition, removal  from  one  city  to  another,  or 
change  of  occupation.  But  during  these 
twenty  years,  Germany  has  had  only  two 
per  cent,  of  her  people  unemployed.  Also, 
the  average  migration  from  Germany  is 
thirty  thousand  per  year.  Since  1900,  Ger- 
many has  lost  to  her  foreign  colonies  and  to 
the  United  States  four  hundred  thousand, — 
but  during  the  same  time  Britain  has  lost 
two  million,  five  hundred  thousand  people ! 

The  savings  of  the  working  people  are 
indicated  by  the  deposits  in  savings-banks. 
During  the  seven  years  between  1900  and 
1907,  the  savings  of  the  working  people  of 
Germany  increased  from  a  little  over  two 
billions  of  dollars  to  three  and  a  half  bil- 
28 


Her  Problems  of  Expansion 

lions.  During  the  same  seven  years,  the 
savings  and  deposits  of  the  working  people 
in  England  advanced  from  nine  hundred 
millions  of  dollars  to  ten  hundred  millions. 
That  is,  the  deposits  of  the  German  working 
people  have  grown  exactly  nine  times  as 
fast  as  those  in  the  British  savings-banks; 
thus  for  every  dollar  deposited  in  the  poor 
man's  bank  in  England,  the  German  work- 
ing classes  have  deposited  nine  dollars.  And 
this  is  the  more  remarkable  because  the 
German  working  people,  in  addition,  have 
been  pouring  their  savings  into  lots,  lands, 
cottages,  and  houses,  while  the  English 
workingman  finds  it  almost  impossible  to 
obtain  freehold  land.  Professor  Barker 
thinks  that  the  larger  part  of  the  savings 
of  the  German  working  classes  has  gone  into 
fields,  houses,  and  cottages. 

The  prosperity  of  Germany  is  further  in- 
dicated by  the  lessening  number  of  paupers. 
The  most  terrible  memory  that  an  American 
brings  home  from  England  to-day  is  the 
recollection  of  the  "  hunger  brigade  "  on  the 
Victoria  Embankment.  Poverty  in  England 
is  like  the  water  in  a  swamp.  "When  the 
hunter  puts  down  his  foot,  the  mire  oozes  up 
all  about  with  every  step,  and  when  you  go 
29 


Germany's  Growth 

from  the  "Whitechapel  district  in  London 
to  the  poorer  regions  of  Liverpool  or  of 
Manchester,  that  problem  of  poverty,  rags, 
squalor,  and  wretchedness  is  always  present. 
But  you  may  travel  for  weeks  and  months 
in  Germany  without  even  seeing  a  beggar  or 
having  a  hand  stretched  out  for  assistance. 
You  look  in  vain  for  any  tenement  region. 
Every  German  town  and  city  has  a  farm  on 
the  outskirts,  and  there  the  man  out  of  em- 
ployment can  have  his  bean  soup,  his  por- 
ridge, his  bread  and  coffee.  For  a  man  out 
of  employment  to  beg  would  be  for  the  beg- 
gar to  go  to  jail,  while  the  man  who  gave 
him  the  silver  coin  also  goes,  being  equally 
culpable.  Moreover,  every  employer  has  to 
keep  back  a  cent  or  two  daily,  to  which  the 
state  adds  another  cent  and  invests  it  wisely, 
thus  making  possible  a  workingman's  old- 
age  pension,  his  sickness  pension,  and  his  ac- 
cident pension, — such  a  system  as  England's 
Liberal  administration  has  recently  been  in- 
troducing into  that  country.  But  the  German 
workingman  pays  much  of  his  own  pension 
and  does  not  receive  it  as  a  free  gift,  as  does 
England's  workingman  in  her  hothouse 
scheme  for  growing  paupers.  England  has 
a  million  people  who  receive  support  as 
30 


Her  Problems  of  Expansion 

paupers,  invalids,  or  criminals,  and  two  mil- 
lions more  who  receive  an  occasional  gift  of 
flour  or  a  little  coal.  As  Germany  has  fifty 
per  cent,  more  population,  Germany  ought 
to  have  four  and  a  half  million  people  who 
receive  occasionally  a  little  coal  or  flour.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  the  people  who  are  in  her 
poor-farms,  either  permanently  or  for  a  short 
time,  are  only  about  one  million.  The  pros- 
perity of  Germany,  therefore,  seems  incon- 
trovertible. That  her  method  of  handling 
the  problems  of  poverty,  crime,  and  drunk- 
enness is  little  by  little  doing  away  with 
their  unfortunates,  is  equally  certain.  Ger- 
many has  taught  the  people  of  the  earth  much 
as  to  what  the  state  can  do  and  what  the  state 
cannot  do  to  assist  the  working  people. 

Some  men  trace  the  new  industrial  epoch 
in  Germany  to  the  influence  of  the  Kaiser. 
But,  when  the  full  summer  is  come,  and  the 
rain  and  the  warm  air  have  ripened  the 
fruit  on  the  bough,  and  the  peach  and  the 
plum  are  ready  to  fall,  we  must  not  suppose 
that  the  man  who  stretches  up  his  hand  and 
shakes  the  tree  created  the  fruit.  The 
Kaiser  of  Germany  entered  the  scene  at  a 
strategic  and  ripe  moment,  but  he  has  also 
been  a  good  husbandman.  The  great  news- 
Si 


Germany's  Growth 

paper  clipping  bureau  in  London  is  respon- 
sible for  the  statement  that  the  Kaiser  is  the 
most  talked  of  ruler  in  the  world,  in  that 
there  are  two  clippings  about  the  Emperor 
William  to  one  about  any  other  ruler  on 
earth.  His  versatility  is  indicated  by  his 
speeches,  filling  some  ten  volumes  and  cover- 
ing every  conceivable  subject.  He  writes  as 
the  soldier,  the  sailor,  the  theologian,  the 
philosopher,  the  dramatist,  the  banker,  the 
railroad  man.  He  discusses  music,  painting, 
sculpture,  architecture,  archeology,  and  even 
makes  occasional  excursions  to  heaven  and 
hell.  He  is  certainly  one  of  the  best  equipped 
men  in  the  world  to-day. 

One  enormous  advantage  he  has  always 
had,  namely,  that  experts  in  every  depart- 
ment of  science  are  always  out  as  scouts  to 
bring  him  back  the  latest  achievement. 
AVhen  Professor  Roentgen  announced  the 
discovery  of  the  X-ray,  and  the  first  hint  of  it 
was  given  out  in  a  Berlin  morning  newspaper, 
the  first  congratulatory  telegram  that  came  to 
the  scientist  was  dated  at  six  o'clock  in  the 
morning  and  came  from  the  Emperor's  palace. 

No  ruler  in  the  world  has  been  so  hard  a 
worker  or  such  a  traveller.  His  people  say 
that  their  Kaiser  spends  one  week  out  of  every 
32 


Her  Problems  of  Expansion 

four  on  his  private  car,  travelling  over  his 
empire.  His  knowledge  of  the  leaders  of 
finance  and  commerce  in  the  different  cities, 
of  the  condition  of  every  board  of  trade  in 
every  town  and  village,  and  of  the  work 
carried  on  in  every  factory,  is  first-hand 
knowledge.  No  Englishman  or  Frenchman 
can  read  those  volumes  containing  the  Em- 
peror's speeches  and  articles  of  the  last  seven- 
teen years  without  realizing  that  Frederick 
the  Great  has  had  a  successor,  a  man  of  intel- 
lect, imagination,  initiative,  boundless  energy, 
courage,  a  man  with  world  dreams  and  visions. 
The  Kaiser  has  more  power  over  his  people, 
more  influence  over  the  legislative  and  finan- 
cial departments  of  his  government,  than 
any  ruler  on  earth ;  and  he  has  the  ability 
and  the  strength  of  hand  to  hold  the  reins, 
and  to  use  the  sceptre.  Any  statement  re- 
garding Germany's  prosperity,  her  growth, 
and  her  future,  must  make  a  large  place, 
therefore,  for  the  figure  of  this  Emperor,  who 
is  the  most  interesting  ruler  of  his  generation. 
One  of  the  enthusiasms  of  the  Kaiser  is 
the  new  Navy  League.  It  stirs  the  note  of 
wonder  that  at  the  very  moment  when  Eng- 
land is  passing  through  a  political  revolution 
over  raising  her  taxes,  or  maintaining  her 
33 


Germany's  Growth 

navy  at  its  present  point  of  efficiency,  a 
movement  is  on  in  Germany  to  hasten  the 
increase  of  her  battle-ships,  and,  therefore, 
increase  her  taxes.  The  foremost  aristo- 
crats, the  highest  military  officers,  and  the 
richest  bankers  of  Germany  are  back  of  this 
league,  that  now  includes  a  million  members, 
and  is  said  to  be  the  largest  voluntary  asso- 
ciation for  patriotic  purposes  in  the  world. 
The  organization  has  four  thousand  branches 
in  as  many  German  towns  and  cities,  and  an 
army  of  lecturers  go  up  and  down  the  land, 
with  stereopticon  and  moving  pictures  show- 
ing the  fleets  of  foreign  nations,  and  the 
present  condition  of  the  German  fleet.  Dur- 
ing 1910,  twenty  thousand  lectures  were 
given,  to  stimulate  interest  in  the  increase  of 
the  German  navy,  against  the  hour  when 
the  nation  might  come  to  close  terms  with 
England.  The  Navy  League  has  published 
a  book  containing  sixty  songs  on  the  subject, 
"  Our  Future  Lies  upon  the  AVater." 

In  this  extraordinary  campaign  for  the 
rapid  increase  of  the  German  navy,  more 
than  seven  million  books  and  pamphlets 
have  been  distributed  in  a  single  year,  until 
now  the  sky  is  raining  books  and  appeals  to 
the  German  people.  The  result  of  this  un- 
34 


Her  Problems  of  Expansion 

ceasing  agitation  has  been  that  Germany 
became  navy  mad.  Where  twenty  years 
ago  the  shops  at  Christmas  were  filled  with 
boxes  of  tin  soldiers,  and  later  with  tin  au- 
tomobiles, now  every  German  boy  wants  a 
tin  battle-ship.  Contracts  have  been  let  for 
sixty  battle-ships,  invincibles,  and  battle- 
ships of  the  first  and  second  class,  all  to  be 
completed  within  sixty  months.  Already 
Germany  has  thirteen  slips  in  which  she  can 
build  the  largest  dreadnoughts,  where  Eng- 
land has  only  nine.  The  result  is,  that  within 
the  next  few  years  Germany  may  have  twenty 
invincibles,  "  each  one  of  which  is  to  be  larger 
and  more  powerful  than  our  own  dread- 
nought," writes  Professor  Barker.  One  thing 
is  certain, — Germany  has  the  money,  she  has 
the  men,  and  the  determination,  and  she  has 
decided  to  see  to  it  that,  before  1920,  the 
battle-ships  under  the  control  of  the  Kaiser 
are  equal  in  number  and  size  to  the  battle-ships 
of  England.  For  the  past  few  years,  however, 
England  has  built  two  to  Germany's  one. 

Only  the  traveller  who  has  made  many 
trips  to  Germany  and  spent  months  and  even 
years  there  during  the  last  twenty  years  can 
appreciate  the  change  in  Germany's  system 
of  military  education.  Americans  have  been 
35 


Germany's  Growth 

taught  that  the  fort  and  the  military  post  are 
centres  of  idleness,  temptation,  intemperance. 
There  is  a  conviction  in  this  country  that  the 
best  way  to  make  a  soldier  is  to  make  a  man, 
and  then  when  the  national  crisis  comes  he 
will  soon  master  military  tactics.  There  is, 
therefore,  bitter  opposition  to  the  withdrawal 
of  a  youth  for  one  or  two  years  from  produc- 
tive industry  to  expose  him  to  the  tempta- 
tions of  an  idle  camp.  But  in  the  last  few 
years,  Germany,  scientific  in  everything,  has 
organized  the  life  of  her  soldier  boys.  It 
may  be  doubted  whether  any  nation  has  as 
good  a  system  of  technical  education  for  the 
manufacture  of  good  workingmen  and  good 
farmers — real  work,  for  transforming  peasants 
into  citizens  of  Germany  and  of  the  world. 

When  two  years  have  passed  these  boys 
will  know  about  Germany's  industrial  and 
manufacturing  life,  her  herds  and  flocks,  the 
best  way  to  cross  and  breed  her  animals; 
about  her  soils  and  fertilizers,  about  the  care 
of  the  horse,  the  plough,  and  the  reaper ;  how 
to  guard  against  the  wastes,  and  how  to  make 
the  farm  that  has  been  yielding  six  per  cent, 
yield  twelve  per  cent,  on  the  investment. 
They  will  know  about  the  weakness  and  the 
strength  of  Russia  and  Austria,  of  France  and 
36 


Her  Problems  of  Expansion 

England.  They  enter  the  array  stooped  and 
weak  physically,  they  leave  it  well  set  up, 
and  soldiers  every  inch.  They  enter  the 
array  uncertain  and  vacillating,  and  they 
leave  it  with  fixed  habits,  men  who  work  by 
the  clock.  They  enter  the  army  peasants, 
with  a  narrow  outlook  ;  they  leave  it  citizens 
of  Germany,  of  Europe,  and  of  the  world. 

Indeed,  if  every  boy  of  eighteen  in  the 
United  States  could  be  put  through  such  a 
rigorous  physical,  intellectual,  patriotic,  and 
moral  drill  for  twelve  months,  it  would  be 
of  immense  value  to  the  property  interests 
of  this  Kepublic,  altogether  aside  from  its 
military  uses. 

This  explains  the  fact  that  the  farmhouses 
of  Germany  have  new  roofs,  new  barns,  and 
new  outbuildings ;  that  the  land  is  steadily 
growing  richer  and  more  productive.  It  is 
this  scientific  method  that  enables  the  Ger- 
man workingman  to  take  the  smoke  out  of 
his  chimney-stack,  to  cleanse  it  of  carbon, 
and  to  explode  it  in  his  gas  engine.  A  woman 
with  white  gloves  can  go  through  some  Ger- 
man steel  plants,  and  come  out  with  a  spot- 
less garment.  Indeed,  if  Pittsburgh  had  as 
poor  coal  and  iron  as  Germany,  its  steel-mak- 
ers would  be  forced  to  better  their  methods 
37 


Germany's  Growth 

or  go  out  of  business.  As  it  is,  the  United 
States  Steel  Company  has  made  a  gain  in  its 
foreign  export  trade  of  steel  during  the  last 
ten  years,  but  Germany  has  increased  her  ex- 
port of  steel  to  foreign  countries  just  eight 
times  as  fast  as  the  United  States,  so  high  is 
the  price  for  our  steel. 

And  the  Germany  that  is  making  science 
to  solve  the  problem  of  poverty,  and  is  re- 
building her  towns  on  scientific  lines,  saving 
the  wastes  in  her  factories,  and  guarding  the 
lives  of  her  working  people,  has  outstripped 
the  people  of  this  Republic,  despite  their  un- 
developed natural  resources,  in  at  least  ten 
departments  of  human  industry. 

Whether  or  not,  therefore,  all  Europe  is  to 
be  Germanized,  one  thing  is  certain :  all  the 
nations  of  the  earth  may  well  go  to  school  to 
Germany,  and  study  her  methods  of  lighten- 
ing industrial  burdens  and  saving  industrial 
wastes;  to  the  end  that  property  may  re- 
deem all  people  out  of  drudgery  and  want, 
giving  them  leisure  to  grow  ripe  and  an  op- 
portunity to  become  wise  and  self-sufficing. 

Now  for  all  lovers  of  Germany,  the  attack 
upon  Belgium  has  been  all  but  unexplain- 
able.  Germany's  wealth,  Germany's  in- 
creasing efficiency,  her  growing  investments 
38 


Her  Problems  of  Expansion 

in  the  farm  lands  of  Eastern  France  and 
Belgium,  have  made  it  certain  that  she  had 
the  money  with  which  to  slowly  purchase 
the  land  she  needed.  Germany  had  two 
hundred  miles  of  frontier  line  bordering  on 
France :  and  she  had  given  her  solemn  pledge 
to  maintain  the  neutrality  of  Belgium.  The 
publication  of  the  Belgian  Paper  has  shown 
conclusively  to  all  the  nations  that  the  right 
of  England  and  France  to  cross  her  territory 
was  expressly  denied  by  Belgium,  except 
upon  one  condition,  namely,  that  Germany 
had  first  of  all  violated  her  solemn  pledge 
and  had  already  invaded  Belgium. 

In  his  chapter  on  the  "  Duty  to  Make 
War "  Bernhardi  explains  how  he  would 
justify  an  unprovoked  attack  upon  Bel- 
gium : — "  We  must  not  think  merely  of  ex- 
ternal foes,  who  compel  us  to  fight ;  a  war 
may  seem  to  be  forced  upon  a  statesman  by 
the  state  of  home  affairs."  Within  one  week 
after  Belgium  had  been  laid  waste,  and  the 
whole  land  had  been  turned  into  a  grave- 
yard, the  local  Anzeiger  referred  to  Belgium 
as  "  this  quarry  which  has  been  laid  low  by 
the  German  army,  and  which  now  belongs 
whole  and  undivided  to  the  German  people." 
In  the  same  paper,  ignoring  the  solemn  treaty 
39 


Germany's  Growth 

obligations  with  Belgium,  a  German  general 
adds,  "  All  Belgium  must  become  German,  not 
in  order  that  a  few  million  rascals  may  have 
the  honour  of  belonging  to  the  German  Em- 
pire, but  so  that  we  may  have  her  excellent 
harbours,  and  be  able  to  hold  the  knife  under 
the  nose  of  perfidious,  cowardly  England." 

The  explanation  is  found,  doubtless,  in 
Germany's  undue  emphasis  of  militarism. 
The  ideals  of  force  first  lifted  up  by  Fred- 
erick the  Great  and  carried  forward  by 
Bismarck,  have  culminated  in  this  war  led 
by  William  the  Second.  What  an  indi- 
vidual desires,  he  prepares  for.  When  a 
man  wants  a  duel,  he  buys  a  pistol.  When 
a  nation  wants  a  war  it  prepares  for  war ; 
is  ready  when  war  comes ;  or  seizes  an  op- 
portunity to  start  the  war.  And  the  nation 
that  wants  a  war  and  is  ready  for  war,  and 
starts  a  war,  would  seem  by  self-confession 
to  have  been  responsible  for  the  war.  One 
thing  is  certain, — ideals  shape  individuals 
and  states.  What  man  thinketh  in  his  heart 
to-day,  that  he  will  perform  to-morrow.  All 
crimes  and  all  heroisms  are  rehearsed  in 
advance  upon  the  stage  of  the  imagination, 
and  later  on  reproduced  in  practical  life. 
An  ideal  is  as  real  as  a  paving-stone.  In- 
40 


Her  Problems  of  Expansion 

dustrial  ideals  and  military  ideals  have  been 
for  forty  years  struggling  for  the  mastery  in 
Germany,  and  now  at  last  it  would  seem  as 
if  the  military  ideal  has  become  uppermost. 
Drill  a  boy  for  battle  to-day,  and  you  will 
have  a  Louvain  to-morrow. 

If  therefore  we  take  the  lesson  of  the  great 
war  for  to-day,  we  shall  find  the  conclusion 
of  the  whole  matter  in  that  law  of  moral 
sequence,  stated  long  ago, — the  individual  and 
the  nation  that  soweth  to  the  wind  shall  reap 
the  whirlwind,  and  they  that  sow  to  the  flesh 
through  lust  shall  of  lust  reap  corruption. 
What,  then,  shall  Germany  look  for  ? 


EESOURCES  OF  GERMANY 
Area,  208, 780  square  miles. 
Population,  Jan.  1,  1913,  64,925,99s.1 
Estimated  wealth,  Barker's  estimate,  $90,000,- 

000,000. 

Annual  revenue,  $924,000,000. 
National  debt,  $1,200,000,000. 
Army  budget,  1913,  $265,000,000. 
Navy  budget,  1913,  $115,000,000. 
German  army,  official  report,  Jan.  1,  1913. 
Standing  army,    -     -      790,000. 
First  reserve,  -     -     -      450,000. 
Second  reserve,    -     -  2,600,000. 

Total, 3,840,000. 

1  Latest  returns  give  68,000,000. 
41 


Germany's  Growth 

Germany  has  second  largest  navy. 

Germany  has  second  largest  commercial  fleet. 

Germany  leads  the  world  in  iron  and  steel. 

Germany  leads  the  world  in  chemical  products. 

United  States  has  three  commercial  travellers 
in  Switzerland ; 

Germany  has  four  thousand  eight  hundred. 

In  1909  the  State  owned  34,142  miles  of  rail- 
roads. 

Private  individuals  owned  1,987  miles  of  rail- 
road. 

In  proportion,  our  railroads  kill  ten  times  as 
many  passengers  as  Germany's. 

Freight  rates  in  Germany  one-third  what  they 
are  in  England,  although  higher  than  with 
us. 

Within  twenty  years  Germany  has  spent 
$150,000,000  upon  canals. 

Germany  owns  the  telephone  and  telegraph 
lines.  These  lines  pay  a  profit  to  the  gov- 
ernment of  ten  million  dollars  a  year. 

People  emigrate  when  dissatisfied.  During 
ten  years  Germany  has  lost  an  average  of 
only  thirty  thousand  immigrants  each  year. 

Germany's  strength  :  team  work. 

Germany's  weakness :  lack  of  individual  in- 
itiative. 

Germany's  peril :  the  belief  that  knowledge 
and  instruction  are  culture. 


42 


II 

France : 
Her  Contribution  to  the  World 


The  newcomer  in  England  sees  our  solidity ; 
the  newcomer  among  the  French  is  dazzled  by 
their  mobility.  .  .  .  Only  in  Paris  life  sparkles 
like  that,  free  from  extinguishing  cares,  responsibili- 
ties, conventions,  prejudices,  and  commonplaces : 
it  dazzles  for  months,  then  the  amazing  discovery 
begins — the  finding  of  a  solid  Paris,  a  Paris  of  the 
old  earth,  with  roots  in  deep  custom,  a  Paris  of 
rock-like  consistency  and  iron  faithfulness,  a  sim- 
ple, straight,  ordered,  long-headed,  and  earnest 
Paris.  .  .  . 

It  can  be  said  that  the  national  French  trait  is 
the  combination  of  mobility  with  solidity — mobil- 
ity of  thought  and  feeling  with  solidity  of  char- 
acter. 

LAWRENCE  JERROLD. 
"  The  Real  France,"  1911. 


n 

FRANCE:    HER    CONTRIBUTION  TO 

THE  WORLD ;  WHAT  HER  PEOPLE 

ARE  FIGHTING  FOR 

THE  news  that  the  French  armies  had 
crowded  the  Germans  back  from  their 
advance  within  twenty  miles  of  Paris,  to 
where  the  nearest  point  of  fighting  was  sixty 
miles  from  the  capital  filled  the  whole  world 
with  astonishment. 

Germany's  army  represents  sixty-eight 
millions  of  people, — France's,  thirty-eight 
millions.  Germany  had  prepared  her  can- 
non, rifles,  bombshells,  automobiles,  and  her 
military  machine  moved  like  an  invincible 
Juggernaut  over  brave  little  Belgium. 
France  was  not  expecting  war,  and  was 
not  prepared  for  war,  and  has  about  three 
soldiers  to  Germany's  five.  When  the 
Kaiser  and  his  generals  announced  that 
within  three  weeks  from  August  first  they 
would  dine  in  the  palace  of  Versailles,  mili- 
tary critics  were  impressed,  knowing  that 
45 


France 

sixteen  ounces  of  powder  outweigh  ten 
ounces.  Strictly  speaking,  no  artist  has 
any  physical  right  to  beat  a  trained  soldier. 
And  no  artistic  and  literary  nation,  giving 
itself  to  paintings,  marbles,  the  city  beauti- 
ful movement,  literature  and  finance,  has 
any  physical  right  to  hold  at  bay  and  then 
defeat  a  nation  that  has  given  itself  to  bomb- 
shells, 42-centimeter  guns,  rifles,  and  the 
drill  that  turns  the  nation  into  an  armed 
regiment. 

The  unexpected  happened.  What  the 
French  soldier  has  lacked  in  the  way  of 
weapons  and  drill,  he  has  more  than  made 
up  through  initiative,  courage,  and  strategy. 
Every  war  has  its  high- water  mark ;  at 
Gettysburg  the  wave  of  Southern  invasion 
was  at  its  highest  point,  and  afterwards  the 
tide  began  to  ebb,  and  died  away  on  the 
sands  at  Appomattox.  Scores  of  military 
critics,  on  the  basis  of  a  lifelong  study  and 
personal  experience,  have  agreed  that  the 
high-water  mark  of  this  war  was  at  a  point 
twenty  miles  north  of  Paris,  and  that — 
however  severe  may  be  the  task — it  prom- 
ises to  be  but  a  question  of  months  when 
the  last  invader  is  expelled  from  French 
territory,  while  France  may  hope  to  see  the 
46 


Her  Contribution  to  the  World 

tri-colour  float  once  more  over  Alsace  and 
Lorraine. 

American  citizens  to-day  are  asking  why 
Germany  attacked  France,  and  have  in  vain 
sought  a  reason  for  the  German  soldier's 
hatred  of  the  French  people.  Some  scholars 
have  said  that  the  stationary  birth-rate  of 
France  indicated  the  decline  of  that  great 
nation.  But  it  is  evident  that  this  judgment 
must  be  reversed.  The  French  republic  is 
probably  the  most  stable  government  in 
Europe.  The  assassination  of  an  autocrat 
may  usher  in  a  revolution,  in  those  countries 
that  stand  for  the  principle  of  imperialism. 
But  many  people  could  be  assassinated  in 
France  without  imperilling  their  republic 
and  their  self-government. 

The  present  President  also,  Poincare,  is 
doubtless  one  of  the  ablest  statesmen  and 
diplomats  that  modern  France  has  produced. 
And  what  Bismarck  did,  Delcasse,  as  recent 
minister  of  foreign  affairs,  undid.  The  whole 
purpose  of  the  diplomacy  of  Bismarck  as 
to  France  was  to  secure  and  maintain  its 
isolation.  After  Sedan,  Bismarck  taxed 
France  one  billion  dollars,  and  took  the 
provinces  of  Alsace  and  Lorraine.  So  mar- 
vellous were  France's  reserves  of  thrift  and 
47 


France 

manhood  that  the  republic  recovered  itself 
within  five  years.  Out  of  adversity  and 
Sedan,  a  new  France  was  born.  In  his 
anger  and  disappointment,  Bismarck  fo- 
mented a  new  war  with  France,  and  would 
have  attacked  the  republic  had  England  and 
Russia  not  interfered.  From  that  hour,  Bis- 
marck stirred  up  jealousy  on  the  part  of 
Italy  and  Spain  and  England  against  France. 
In  1898-1905,  Delcasse  came  to  power,  and 
the  great  diplomat  strengthened  the  alliance 
between  Russia  and  France,  and  then  brought 
about  the  closest  possible  understanding  be- 
tween France  and  England. 

Thus,  while  Bismarck  succeeded  in  isolat- 
ing France,  and  leaving  her  apparently  with- 
out a  friend,  Delcasse  overthrew  Bismarck's 
plans,  and  actually  succeeded  in  isolating 
Germany,  until  Germany  is  without  a  friend, 
except  the  poor  old  Dual  Monarchy,  and  the 
Unspeakable  Turk.  One  morning  William 
the  Second  awoke  to  discover  that  Ger- 
many was  caught  between  the  upper  and 
nether  millstone  of  Russia  and  France,  with 
England  the  close  friend  of  both  countries. 
Thinking  that  Italy,  Spain  and  England 
would  object,  and  therefore  develop  a  hatred 
against  France, '  Bismarck,  thirty-five  years 
48 


Her  Contribution  to  the  World 

ago,  gave  out  the  word  that  Germany  would 
not  object  if  France  began  to  develop  her 
colonies  in  Africa  and  Asia.  Now,  the 
Kaiser  is  chagrined  to  find  that  France, 
with  England  and  the  United  States,  owns 
practically  all  the  good  colonies  of  the 
world,  with  the  richest  undeveloped  natural 
resources,  while  Germany  has  only  two  small 
colonies  in  Africa  and  one  in  China ;  and 
through  Japan's  aid  has  now  lost  all  these. 
Bismarck  was  the  great  demiurgic  force  of 
1870.  But  France  has  developed  statesmen 
and  diplomats  who  have  undone  Bismarck's 
work,  recovered  the  ground  lost  forty  years 
ago,  and  left  Germany  practically  alone  in 
Europe. 

To  reasons  based  upon  ambition  to  domi- 
nate, self-defence  and  fear  of  rivals,  must 
now  be  added  Germany's  desire  to  possess 
herself  of  the  newly  discovered  iron  deposits 
in  Northern  France.  This  is  an  era  of  steel. 
Other  ages  have  been  called  the  age  of  stone, 
and  the  age  of  bronze,  but  the  Twentieth 
Century  is  the  era  of  steel.  German  dread- 
noughts mean  hematite  iron.  Forty-two  cen- 
timeter guns  mean  high  grade  steel.  Ger- 
many's leadership  in  steel  means  iron  ores. 

In  "  Problems  of  Power,"  "William  Morton 
49 


France 

Fullerton  says  that  "  by  the  middle  of  the 
present  century  the  German  iron  mines  will 
be  exhausted.  Within  thirty  years  the  same 
fate  will  have  befallen  those  of  Luxembourg. 
When  the  iron  famine  comes,  the  vast  foun- 
dries and  steel  industries  of  Westphalia, 
Silesia,  the  Rhenish  provinces,  arid  the  valley 
of  the  Sarre  will  have  to  put  out  their  fires. 
Twenty  millions  of  Germany's  population  will 
be  driven  to  look  elsewhere  for  a  livelihood. 
Now  the  iron  ore  deposits,  which  in  the 
Twentieth  Century  are  as  indispensable  an 
asset  as  wheat  fields  for  a  civilized  commu- 
nity, abound  just  over  the  Franco-German 
border  in  the  department  of  the  Meurthe  and 
the  Moselle.  In  the  basin  of  Briey  there  is 
iron  enough  to  last  for  two  hundred  and  fifty 
years.  Germany  thought  she  had  included 
in  the  provisions  of  the  Treaty  of  Frankfort 
all  the  iron  mines  of  Eastern  France.  The 
discovery  shortly  afterwards  of  the  mines  of 
Briey  revealed  on  French  soil  undreamed 
sources  of  wealth,  which  became  a  veritable 
torture  of  Tantalus  to  the  Germans  over  the 
border." 

In  the  judgment  of  the  best  European 
mining  engineers,  statesmen,  and  diploma- 
tists, Germany,  after  a  twenty  years'  hunt 
So 


Her  Contribution  to  the  World 

for  iron  ores  throughout  the  world,  has 
finally  grown  desperate,  and  decided  that 
with  her  armies  she  would  seize  the  iron  de- 
posits near  Namur  in  Belgium,  and  the  vast 
hematite  ores  of  Northern  France.  The  war 
between  France  and  England  in  1776  was  a 
war  over  the  northern  furs  found  in  Canada  ; 
the  war  between  England  and  South  Africa 
was  a  war  over  gold  and  diamonds ;  the 
revolution  in  Mexico  is  a  struggle  for  the 
possession  of  farm  lands  and  oil  fields ;  and 
Germany's  army  invaded  Belgium  and 
Northern  France  with  an  eye  to  possess 
herself  of  the  iron  ores  that  are  to  control 
Europe  for  the  next  two  hundred  and  fifty 
years. 

In  his  fascinating  study  of  the  new  inter- 
nationalism, Fullerton  comments  upon  the 
statement  found  in  "L'Allemagne  aux  Abois," 
that  "  France  seems  destined,  if  all  goes  well, 
to  become  the  most  powerful  nation  of  met- 
allurgists in  the  world."  This  prophecy  is 
apparently  based  upon  the  new  financial  pol- 
icy that  has  been  manifest  for  several  years 
on  the  part  of  French  financiers.  It  is  well 
known  that  the  French  people  have  used 
their  enormous  wealth  in  loans  to  build  up 
the  manufactories  of  other  countries  that  were 
.51 


France 

willing  to  pay  a  high  rate  of  interest.  Ful- 
lerton  uses  the  figure  of  the  reservoir  with 
reference  to  the  eight  or  nine  large  credit 
companies  who  have  later  "  canalized  "  the 
wealth  of  France,  and  made  enormous  loans 
to  Germany,  Turkey,  Russia,  Japan,  the 
Argentine  Republic  and  the  United  States. 
But  this  policy  of  loaning  money  to  foreign 
manufactures  resulted  in  the  starving  of 
French  inventors,  French  enterprises,  French 
foundries.  This  method  explains  the  fact 
that  for  years  the  American  traveller  in 
crossing  France  passed  through  hundreds  of 
villages  that  had  no  chimney  stack  emitting 
smoke,  no  foundry  or  factory  sending  out 
the  hum  of  industry. 

But  a  new  era  has  dawned  for  France ; 
gone  forever  the  day  when  French  money 
will  be  used  to  fertilize  foreign  deserts. 
France  has  begun  to  loan  her  money  to  her 
own  men.  A  sound  banker  incidentally  se- 
cures safety  for  his  depositors,  and  dividends 
for  his  stockholders,  but  the  really  great 
banker  is  he  who  selects  young  men  and 
young  businesses,  and  has  the  genius  to 
recognize  men  and  institutions  that  have 
growth  in  them.  And  the  thing  upon  which 
such  a  banker  prides  himself  is  that  he  has 
52 


Her  Contribution  to  the  World 

built  up  men  and  institutions  and  made  them 
great.  Now  that  France  has  awakened  to  a 
new  recognition  of  the  value  of  her  own  iron 
industries,  and  now  that  Germany  is  within 
sight  of  the  exhaustion  of  her  ores,  France 
has  started  in  upon  plans  that  ultimately  will 
enable  her  to  lead  all  the  nations  of  Europe 
in  the  production  of  steel ;  and  steel  means 
dreadnoughts,  cannon,  railways,  factories, 
tools,  immeasurable  wealth. 

The  rejoicing  of  the  civilized  world  that 
France,  with  the  aid  of  her  staunch  allies, 
Great  Britain  and  the  indomitable  Albert 
and  his  Belgians,  has  been  progressively  push- 
ing back  militarism  and  is  not  to  be  destroyed 
is  because  the  destruction  of  France  would 
be  a  blow  at  the  very  heart  of  civilization. 
What  Florence  once  was  to  Italy,  that  and 
more  Paris  is  to  the  Twentieth  Century. 
The  great  contribution  of  France  to  society 
has  been  the  diffusion  of  the  beautiful.  The 
common  life  there  is  made  increasingly  to 
minister  to  taste  and  imagination.  The  mis- 
fortune of  the  early  ages  was  that  all  art  and 
beauty  were  concentrated  in  Parthenons, 
palaces  and,  later,  in  Gothic  cathedrals, 
while  the  people  lived  in  mud  huts,  walked 
on  dirt  floors,  wore  sheepskin  garments,  ate 
53 


France 

black  bread,  and  lived  in  squalor,  ugliness 
and  misery.  It  was  France  that  was  the 
apostle  of  the  new  order,  and  Paris  was  the 
stage  from  which  the  new  spirit  spake. 

For  the  first  time  in  history  a  great  people 
deliberately  set  themselves  to  the  task  of 
making  the  instruments  of  the  dining-room, 
parlour  and  library  appeal  to  the  imagination, 
and  as  the  movement  spread,  they  made 
dresses  that  were  warm  to  be  beautiful, 
books  that  were  wise  to  be  also  alluring, 
houses  that  kept  oil  the  rain  and  snow  to 
have  perfect  lines,  until  at  length  Paris  be- 
came the  most  beautiful  city  in  the  world. 
Men  make  money  in  San  Francisco  in  the 
West  and  Petrograd  in  the  East,  but  they 
go  to  Paris  to  spend  their  treasure.  And 
whoever  has  lingered  long  within  the  gal- 
leries is  familiar  with  Paris  drives  and  parks ; 
whoever  has  entered  into  the  spirit  of  her 
school  of  the  Fine  Arts,  her  painting  and 
sculpture  and  architecture ;  whoever  has  at- 
tended her  Salon  year  after  year,  and  has 
then  turned  his  back  on  Paris,  and  journeyed 
to  the  remotest  corners  of  France,  only  to 
find  that  the  whole  nation  is  interested  in 
the  beautiful;  that  the  porter  and  waiter 
know  more  about  great  pictures,  and  the 
54 


Her  Contribution  to  the  World 

reasons  why  the  artist  is  supreme,  than  do 
educated  people  in  other  countries  of  the 
world — that  traveller  will  know  that  France 
has  vindicated  her  method  of  education  at 
the  bar  of  intellect  and  judgment.  And  so 
long  as  Paris  continues  to  lead  the  world  in 
the  beautiful,  she  will  continue  to  draw  into 
her  galleries  the  people  of  wealth  and  leisure, 
as  certainly  as  an  oasis  with  fountains  and 
fruit  trees  will  draw  the  birds  of  paradise 
from  the  desert,  with  its  dust  and  glare. 

The  French  nation  was  the  first  to  recog- 
nize also  the  commercial  element  in  the 
beautiful.  With  a  sure  instinct  they  saw 
that  the  time  had  come  when  men  were  re- 
volting from  ugliness,  and  were  thirsting  for 
a  more  beautiful  life  in  the  great  city.  Man- 
chester appealed  to  men  through  its  cotton 
and  wool,  Berlin  through  its  chemicals,  Lon- 
don by  her  trading  and  wealth  and  finance, 
but  Paris  decided  to  make  an  appeal  to  the 
imagination  through  the  fine  arts.  Fortu- 
nately for  the  city,  the  man  at  the  head  of 
the  government,  the  Emperor  Napoleon  the 
Third,  was  a  dictator,  and  brooked  no  oppo- 
sition. "With  his  architects  he  laid  out  a 
scheme  to  tear  down  a  very  large  percentage 
of  the  houses  in  the  business  centre  of  Paris. 
55 


France 

If  Brooklynites  would  realize  the  compre- 
hensive destruction,  imagine  every  building 
in  Brooklyn  from  Columbia  Heights  on  the 
west,  between  Orange  Street  and  Atlantic 
Avenue  on  to  the  corner  of  Flatbush  and 
Fulton,  levelled  to  the  ground  to-morrow. 
And  then  imagine  other  houses  and  stores 
on  one  side  of  Flatbush  Avenue  razed  to  the 
ground  to  make  an  avenue  twelve  hundred 
feet  wide,  until  the  man  who  stands  under 
MacMonnies'  arch  at  the  entrance  of  Pros- 
pect Park  could  look  straight  down  a  splen- 
did driveway,  from  arch  to  arch,  with  noble 
buildings  flanking  either  side,  until  the  eye 
rested  upon  a  central  arch,  crowning  Columbia 
Heights,  and  looking  out  on  Manhattan  Island. 
For  several  years  Paris  was  filled  with  the 
dust  of  falling  buildings,  but  at  last  the  great 
opera  house  was  built  and  endowed  by  the 
State;  splendid  streets  ran  out  from  the 
Place  de  1'Opera,  like  spokes  from  the 
wheel's  hub.  Bankers  and  merchants  shook 
their  heads  in  despair.  Business  men  in- 
sisted that  the  city  would  be  ruined  by  the 
burden  of  taxation.  Mutters  were  heard  in 
the  cafes,  where  the  common  people  said 
that  the  Emperor  must  be  destroyed  by  an- 
other revolution,  like  Louis  XYI. 
56 


Her  Contribution  to  the  World 

Meanwhile,  the  Emperor's  agents  began 
to  sell  the  lots  on  the  new  streets,  and  the 
property  on  the  new  avenues.  Visitors,  also, 
began  to  come  in  from  all  quarters  of  the 
world,  to  see  the  new  gardens  of  the  Tuiler- 
ies,  the  new  Arc  de  Triomphe — with  great 
avenues  radiating  from  it  like  a  star,  begun 
by  Napoleon  I,  but  completed  by  his  nephew 
— the  great  Champs  Elysees  that  connected 
the  two,  until  a  day  came  when  the  people 
discovered  that  all  their  hotels  were  crowded 
with  strangers  from  every  quarter  of  the 
world.  The  vistas  of  Paris  are  superb. 
Every  great  avenue,  every  noble  bridge 
across  the  Seine,  is  faced  at  its  end  by  some 
splendid  church  or  other  public  edifice— 
some  of  them  venerable  with  age,  towards 
which  the  avenues  or  bridges  have  been  di- 
rected, some  of  them  parts  of  the  new  con- 
struction. 

The  result  of  this  was  amazing.  Land  be- 
gan to  go  up  in  the  outskirts  of  the  city, 
where  gardeners  were  raising  vegetables  and 
fruits  for  the  foreign  visitors.  Merchants 
worked  day  and  night  in  looking  after  their 
trade  with  their  new  customers.  Poor  men 
found  work,  drivers  of  carriages  were  never 
without  passengers.  Parks  were  filled ;  Paris 
57 


France 

entered  upon  an  era  of  commercial  pros- 
perity. The  metropolis  had  no  factories,  no 
foundries,  no  chimneys  belching  smoke.  The 
great  city  lay  like  Yenus  upon  the  bank  of 
the  river,  the  island  being  the  eye,  and  Notre 
Dame  the  pupil  thereof,  looking  up  towards 
the  stars.  Hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars 
had  been  expended,  but  it  had  all  returned,  in 
a  way  that  the  people  had  never  understood. 

"We  all  have  heard  Frenchmen  place  a 
monetary  value  upon  the  new  Paris  created 
by  Napoleon  the  Third,  estimating  it  at  two 
hundred  and  fifty  millions  of  dollars  a  year. 
Some  authors  have  said  that  Paris  was  re-, 
ceiving  a  twenty  per  cent,  annual  dividend 
on  her  investment  in  the  beautiful. 

In  our  country  the  universal  theory  is  that 
government  exists  for  the  protection  of  life 
and  property.  Rulers  are  chosen  for  the 
purpose  of  safeguarding  the  factory,  the  shop 
and  the  market-place.  An  exception  is  made, 
indeed,  of  the  intellect,  because  the  State 
does  concern  itself  with  education,  to  the  end 
that  boys  and  girls  may  be  self-supporting. 
But  if  our  people  think  it  perfectly  proper  to 
train  the  intellect,  they  think  it  inconceiv- 
able that  the  State  should  be  taxed  to  train 
the  taste  and  the  imagination.  Instead  of 
58 


Her  Contribution  to  the  World 

asking  what  faculties  are  in  the  soul,  and 
then  trying  to  educate  all  those  faculties,  and 
produce  an  all-round  man,  our  Government 
selects  the  intellect  and  memory  and  decides 
to  ignore  the  rest  of  the  human  soul.  For 
that  reason  our  Congress  will  spend  a  hun- 
dred millions  of  dollars  in  digging  mud  out 
of  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi  Kiver  and  the 
Miami — and  alas !  out  of  a  hundred  other 
streams  that  seem  to  exist  only  for  the  pur- 
pose of  enabling  Congressmen  to  get  public 
moneys  to  spend  in  their  own  little  districts. 
Nobody  knows  what  is  done  with  the  mud, 
nobody  cares  about  the  names  of  the  hundred- 
odd  petty  rivers  that  are  dug  out,  and  nobody 
seems  to  dream  that  the  best  way  to  take  care 
of  the  mud  in  a  river  is  to  train  the  people 
on  the  banks  of  the  aforementioned  stream  ! 
But  the  rulers  of  France  decided  to  train  the 
hand  towards  the  useful,  the  intellect  towards 
the  true,  and  the  imagination  towards  the 
beautiful ;  and  her  people  responded. 

In  every  primary  school  in  France  drawing 
is  taught  with  a  b  c's.  Every  town  of  a 
thousand  inhabitants  has  its  little  museum, 
the  works  of  art  being  supplied  partly  by 
the  commune  or  township,  and  partly  by  the 
national  Government.  Any  boy  who  shows 
59 


France 

the  slightest  aptitude  above  the  average  for 
any  form  of  graphic  art,  architecture,  sculp- 
ture or  painting  is  sent  at  the  expense  of  his 
town  to  the  nearest  provincial  city  and  given 
a  small  pension  for  expenses.  If  he  contin- 
ues to  show  progress,  then  the  county  sends 
him  to  Paris,  with  a  certain  allowance  from 
the  county  funds.  If  he  takes  certain  prizes 
in  Paris  at  the  Ecole  des  Beaux  Arts,  he  can 
compete  for  the  Grand  Prix  de  Home — four 
years  in  Rome,  lodged  in  the  Villa  Medici 
free — and  one  thousand  dollars  per  year  ex- 
pense money.  Every  French  student  of  art, 
who  shows  even  a  second  or  third  rate  talent, 
is  forever  taken  care  of  by  the  Government 
through  commissions  for  decorations  and 
public  improvements.  The  Government  ex- 
pends millions  of  francs  annually  in  pur- 
chasing works  of  art,  not  only  of  the  high- 
est grade,  to  be  placed  in  the  Gallery  of  the 
Luxembourg  in  Paris,  but  also  from  the 
young  artists — solely  to  encourage  them. 
These  latter  paintings  so  purchased  are  dis- 
tributed among  the  small  towns  all  over 
France.  The  value  is  obvious.  First,  en- 
couragement to  young  artists ;  second,  fa- 
miliarization of  the  people  with  the  beautiful. 
In  no  city  of  France  can  the  owner  of  a 
60 


Her  Contribution  to  the  World 

lot  or  plot  of  land  erect  his  own  fancies. 
The  Ministry  of  Fine  Arts  steps  in  to  warn 
and  supervise.  For  instance,  if  the  houses 
right  and  left  of  his  plot  are  French  Renais- 
sance of  three  stories,  material  Caen  stone, 
height  of  windows  eight  feet,  the  owner  of 
the  lot  cannot  erect  Norman  Romanesque  or 
Gothic  ornament ;  nor  can  he  use  brick  ;  nor 
can  he  make  the  windows  larger  or  smaller 
than  his  neighbours'.  The  result  is  unity  lead- 
ing to  harmony.  Further,  every  architect  in 
France  receives  a  license  from  the  Govern- 
ment. He  is  in  every  case  an  architect  of 
eight  to  twelve  years'  training,  and  also  a 
sculptor  and  a  painter.  Every  tree  in  Paris  is 
planted  by  direction  of  the  Fine  Arts  Ministry 
—no  one  can  cut  as  much  as  a  branch  without 
permission.  Every  furniture  worker,  lock- 
smith, carpet- weaver,  plasterer,  potter,  etc., 
can  draw,  and  sometimes  amazingly  well. 
In  Paris,  in  the  Faubourg  St.  Antoine — the 
furniture  makers'  district — the  Government 
maintains  museums  for  the  workmen,  where 
the  finest  examples  of  furniture  are  shown ; 
and  they  are  open  evenings.  The  working- 
man,  craftsman,  is  encouraged  to  come  in  the 
evenings,  without  fuss  or  feathers,  to  see 
masterpieces  of  .woodworking — models  for 
61 


France 

his  own  work.  He  can  borrow  photographs 
and  drawings  bearing  on  his  trade ;  he  can 
obtain  free  lessons  in  drawing,  in  carving, 
in  every  detail  of  his  work.  This  is  true  in 
every  line  of  craftsmanship.  The  State 
maintains  the  famous  Sevres  porcelain  works 
solely  to  keep  alive  French  supremacy  in 
porcelain.  The  greatest  chemists  are  here 
at  work,  ever  seeking  new  ingredients  to 
make  improvements  in  pigment,  and  great 
artists  work  on  the  decorations.  All  discov- 
eries are  at  the  service  of  French  porcelain 
makers;  any  French  porcelain  or  pottery 
establishment  can  obtain  skilled,  trained  art- 
ists and  artisans  from  Sevres,  trained  at  the 
expense  of  the  nation.  France  trains  crafts- 
men in  jewelry — teaches  them  the  sculptural 
and  art  side— then  the  metallurgical,  and 
gives  them  practical  experience. 

All  the  world's  womankind  go  or  want  to 
go  to  Paris  for  clothes.  A  French  dressmaker 
of  the  first  class  is  always  an  artist  in  her 
department.  They  combine  line  and  colour 
with  the  height,  width,  colour  of  hair,  com- 
plexion of  a  woman,  and  literally  create  a 
work  of  art,  evolving  out  of  these  simple 
materials  a  vision  of  loveliness. 

Further,  in  the  very  heart  of  the  city, 
62 


Her  Contribution  to  the  World 

Paris  condemned  residences  and  shops  upon 
a  tract  along  the  Seine,  equal  to  twenty 
of  our  city  blocks.  There  she  erected,  at 
the  expense  of  many  millions  of  dollars, 
one  enormous  palace  and  another,  smaller, 
where  annual  and  permanent  exhibitions 
could  be  held  of  everything  that  has  to  do 
with  the  life  of  the  common  people, — the 
Grand  Palais  and  the  Petit  Palais  are  the 
perennial  art  centres  of  the  city.  Models  of 
every  kind  of  architecture,  domestic  and 
civil,  models  of  the  ideal  parlour,  the  ideal 
library,  and  dining-room,  and  bedroom  and 
hall.  Models  of  every  known  comfort  and 
convenience  in  a  house.  Models  of  all  con- 
ceivable styles  of  dress,  in  every  country 
and  generation.  Every  youth,  therefore, 
and  girl,  planning  marriage  and  a  little 
home,  can  go  thither  and  find  the  standard, 
just  as  an  artist  uses  the  sapphire  and  the 
ruby  to  tone  his  jaded  colour  sense  up  to 
standard.  Near  the  greater  is  the  smaller 
permanent  palace  for  the  spring  exhibition 
and  the  autumn  exhibition.  Twenty-five 
hundred  canvases  were  on  exhibition  at  the 
Salon  last  spring,  with  twelve  hundred 
pieces  of  marble  and  bronze.  Prizes  were 
given  also  to  workers  in  gold  and  silver. 
63 


France 

It  was  my  fortune  to  see  the  great  artists, 
sculptors  and  literary  men  of  France  on  a 
platform  one  afternoon,  distributing  prizes 
to  the  men  and  women  who  had  painted  the 
best  pictures,  carved  the  best  statues,  or  won 
supremacy  in  architecture.  The  Republic 
was  represented  through  its  President.  Har- 
pigny,  the  painter,  was  there,  and  Rodin, 
the  sculptor ;  Rostand,  the  poet,  and  Anatole 
France,  the  author  and  literary  critic.  Name 
after  name  of  artist  and  architect  was  struck 
off,  as  the  harper  strikes  the  note,  and  with 
wild  cheers  men  acclaimed  the  successful 
aspirant.  What  the  people  admire  deter- 
mines what  boys  and  girls  will  do  and  be. 
When  the  women  clapped  their  little  white 
hands  and  cheered  the  knight,  the  boys 
became  crusaders  and  soldiers.  When  in 
Florence  women  cheered  the  young  artist, 
the  people  closed  their  shops  and  carried 
the  youth  on  their  shoulders  up  and  down 
the  streets,  and  men  threw  purses  at  his  feet. 
To-day  in  many  lands  women  applaud  the 
money-maker  who  can  buy  them  gowns  and 
automobiles  and  equipage,  and  even  a  vulgar 
Croesus  is  the  idol !  Whoever  carries  a  big 
bag  full  of  yellow  mud  can  go  through  the 
life  garden,  deciding  what  flower  he  will 
64 


Her  Contribution  to  the  World 

wear  in  his  lapel,  knowing  that  every  mother 
stands  with  a  pair  of  scissors  to  snip  off  a 
young  bud  to  adorn  the  dollar-spotted  coat. 
But  France  has  made  the  atmosphere  warm 
and  genial  for  the  artist.  Paris  admires  the 
sculptor  and  the  architect,  and  gives  enor- 
mous rewards  for  the  beautiful.  The  result 
is  her  supremacy,  the  supremacy  of  her  city, 
and  the  millions  that  crowd  in  from  every 
corner  of  the  world  to  the  great  art 
centre. 

The  returns  of  this  universal  artistry  to 
France  are  all  but  immeasurable.  Enor- 
mous wealth  is  poured  into  the  coffers  of 
France,  for  which  in  terms  of  raw  material 
France  gives  little  return.  For  example, 
the  dividend  on  the  manufacture  of  cotton 
is,  say,  six  per  cent.  But  Millet's  canvas 
and  colours  cost  him  scarcely  more  than  ten 
dollars,  while  France  has  received  as  high 
as  a  hundred  thousand  dollars  for  a  single 
painting  of  Millet,  ten  dollars  raw  material, 
and  ninety-nine  thousand  nine  hundred  and 
ninety  dollars  profit.  In  the  same  way  the 
French  artist  will  take  ten  dollars'  worth  of 
wood  and  turn  it  into  a  piece  of  artistic  fur- 
niture, which  will  sell  for  a  hundred  dollars, 
which  means  nine  hundred  per  cent,  profit. 
65 


France 

She  has  attracted  twelve  thousand  five  hun- 
dred American  students  thither,  who  spend 
on  an  average  eight  hundred  dollars  to  a 
thousand  dollars  a  year.  She  attracts  visit- 
ors from  all  the  nations  of  the  earth,  who 
wish  to  forget  the  roar  and  din  and  dirt  of 
their  own  capitals,  and  rest  in  the  sunshine 
of  the  accumulated  loveliness  and  beauty  of 
Paris.  To  understand  the  superiority  of  her 
rulers,  one  has  only  to  contrast  the  fact  that 
the  government  of  Paris  is  now  planning  Lo 
expend  a  hundred  and  fifty  million  dollars 
in  making  more  beautiful  one  of  the  neg- 
lected quarters  of  the  city.  But  look  at  the 
way  our  Tammany  Hall  would  receive  a 
proposition  of  that  kind ! 

There  are  more  American  art  students 
abroad  pursuing  the  beautiful  than  there  are 
art  students  of  all  the  other  nations  of  the 
world  put  together — so  says  an  art  journal 
in  Paris.  Now  it  is  proposed  by  the  mem- 
bers of  the  New  York  Art  Societies  to  raise 
a  million  five  hundred  thousand  dollars  for 
a  building  like  the  French  Salon,  with  a 
spring  exhibition  of  painting  and  sculpture, 
with  an  autumn  exhibition,  and  with  a  per- 
manent exhibition.  The  real  object  of  such 
an  exhibition  would  be  the  development  of 
66 


Her  Contribution  to  the  World 

the  imagination  of  American  youth,  in  the 
hope  of  a  great  art  movement.  The  indirect 
result  would  be  the  drawing  to  New  York 
of  millions  of  visitors  every  year — prosperous 
fathers  and  mothers  bringing  their  children 
to  see  the  spring  and  autumn  exhibitions. 

Our  rulers  properly  would  not  allow  a 
foot  of  land  in  our  great  parks,  already 
owned  by  the  people,  and  consecrated  to 
their  use  for  health  and  recreation,  to  be 
used  for  such  a  purpose.  Paris  can  use 
many,  many  blocks  in  the  most  valuable 
centre  of  the  great  city  for  such  a  building 
and  exhibition,  but  New  York  or  Brooklyn 
hesitates  to  condemn  commercial  property 
for  the  higher  uses  of  art.  The  cry  is,  "  Think 
of  the  taxes ! "  "  Let  well  enough  alone ! " 
"  Paternalism  ! "  "  The  government  should 
confine  itself  to  the  life  and  property  of  its 
citizens!"  Our  rulers  believed  in  exercise, 
in  sweat,  and  are  not  quite  sure  whether 
there  is  such  a  faculty  as  imagination,  and 
prefer  perspiration  to  inspiration.  So  the 
ground  will  have  to  be  purchased  by  private 
subscription,  and  the  new  building  erected 
by  private  gifts. 

But  stupidity,  thank  God,  cannot  live  for- 
ever! Death,  after  a  while,  will  remove 
67 


France 

these  obstacles  to  progress  and  the  beautiful, 
while  the  higher  intelligence  will  grow  and 
spread.  For  the  spirit  of  the  beautiful  has 
been  poured  out  upon  the  American  people. 
It  is  not  enough  any  longer  that  the  house  is 
proof  against  the  snow ;  it  must  be  a  beau- 
tiful house :  it  is  not  enough  that  the  book 
holds  the  truth;  the  magazine  must  have 
beautiful  type  and  drawings :  it  is  not  enough 
that  the  garb  is  warm ;  the  dress  must  have 
beautiful  lines. 

Our  Kepublic  owes  a  great  debt  to  the 
motherland,  England,  for  the  Pilgrim  Fa- 
thers, for  our  political  liberties,  for  a  great 
inheritance  of  literature.  But  we  must 
never  forget  our  indebtedness  to  France. 
It  was  Paris  that  welcomed  our  first  am- 
bassador at  the  Court  of  Versailles — 
Benjamin  Franklin.  It  was  a  French  gov- 
ernment— despite  a  reluctant  king — that  fur- 
nished money  loans  and  military  stores  to 
our  Kevolutionists.  It  was  a  French  marquis 
— Lafayette — who  cast  his  life  and  his  for- 
tune and  his  honour  with  the  fortune  of 
Washington.  It  was  a  French  admiral, 
Count  de  Grasse,  who  cooperated  with  the 
colonial  forces  at  Yorktown.  It  was  France 
that  stood  by  us  at  a  critical  epoch,  when 
68 


Her  Contribution  to  the  World 

the  English  king  turned  his  guns  upon  the 
young  Republic.  And  when  in  our  poverty 
the  Government  turned  to  foreign  countries 
for  loans,  it  was  brave  little  Holland  and 
France  that  bought  our  bonds,  and  made  it 
possible  to  fight  the  war  through  to  a  suc- 
cessful issue.  Our  scholars  have  gone  to 
Pascal's  "Thoughts"  for  some  of  their 
greatest  principles,  and  to  a  French  scholar, 
Calvin,  for  the  mother  ideas  of  democracy 
and  representative  government.  It  was  a 
Frenchman,  De  Lesseps,  who  gave  us  the 
first  of  the  great  canals,  at  Suez,  and  inau- 
gurated the  enterprise  of  the  great  Amer- 
ican achievement  at  Panama.  It  was  a 
Frenchman,  Pasteur,  who  made  the  human 
race  his  benefactor  by  the  discovery  of  the 
germ  theory,  as  it  was  the  French  Professor 
and  Madame  Curie  who  gave  us  radium. 

The  people  of  the  Fifteenth  Century 
turned  to  Florence  and  Rome,  but  to-day 
the  lovers  of  the  beautiful  turn  their  eyes 
and  their  steps  towards  that  Mecca  of  the 
fine  arts — Paris,  and  long  for  one  vision  of 
the  Venus  di  Milo,  and  Mona  Lisa  and  the 
Winged  Victory,  that  seem  like  angels  of 
loveliness,  leaning  from  the  battlements  of 
heaven  to  allure  us  upward  towards  the  in- 
69 


France 

accessible    heights  where   they   have  their 
permanent  dwelling  places. 

The  world's  debt  to  France  is  along  the 
higher  lines  of  life,  in  science  and  art,  while 
her  new  developments  are  bringing  her  also 
into  the  more  fundamental  domain  of  ma- 
terial usefulness  in  metallurgy  and  mechanical 
production.  Her  people,  artistic  and  pleasure- 
loving,  are  also  brainy,  thrifty,  earnest  and 
brave;  they  are  fighting  to  preserve  their 
splendid  achievements  from  destruction,  with 
an  added  fervour  of  determination  to  redeem 
their  Alsace-Lorraine  compatriots  lost  to  Ger- 
many in  1870. 


BESOTJRCES  OF  FRANCE,  1913  * 

Area  in  square  miles,  207,054. 
Population,  39,601,509. 
Wealth,  $65,000,000,000. 
National  debt,  $6,510,000,000. 
Annual  revenue,  $1,074,703,595. 
Army  budget  (1913-1914),  $287,298,300. 
Navy  budget  (1913-1914),  $104,238,815. 

Army  :  Standing,      750,000  )  2  i  *0  000 
Eeserves,  1,400,000  J  410U>UI 

1  Estimates  from  the  War   Gazetteer,  N.  Y.  Evening 
Post  Company,  Copyright. 


Ill 

England's  Place  Among  the  Nations  : 
Her  Relations  to  Germany 


As  in  a  body  when  the  blood  is  fresh,  the 
spirits  pure  and  vigorous  not  only  to  vital  but  to 
rational  faculties  ...  it  argues  in  what  good 
plight  and  constitution  the  body  is ;  so,  when  the 
cheerfulness  of  the  people  is  so  sprightly  up,  as 
that  it  has  not  only  wherewith  to  guard  well  its 
own  freedom  and  safety,  but  to  spare,  and  to 
bestow  upon  the  solidest  and  sublimest  points  of 
controversy  and  new  invention,  it  betokens  us  not 
degenerated,  nor  drooping  to  a  fatal  decay,  by 
casting  off  the  old  and  wrinkled  skin  of  corrup- 
tion. .  .  .  Methinks  I  see  in  my  mind  a  noble 
and  puissant  nation  rousing  herself  like  a  strong 
man  after  sleep,  and  shaking  her  invincible  locks. 

JOHN  MILTON. 
*'  Areopag  itica,"  1644. 


in 

ENGLAND'S  PLACE  AMONG  THE 

NATIONS :  HER  RELATIONS 

TO  GERMANY 

THOUSANDS  of  years  ago  Egypt  and 
her  City  of  Thebes  led  the  world  in 
finance  and  trade.  Six  hundred  years  later 
Greece  and  Athens  took  the  lead  and  guided 
the  world  movement  in  finance,  politics,  art 
and  literature.  At  the  beginning  of  the 
Christian  era  Rome  obtained  the  sceptre, 
that  long  afterwards  passed  into  the  hands 
of  Venice.  Now,  for  more  than  one  hundred 
years  England  and  London  have  been  the 
outstanding  forces  in  the  world's  civilization. 
In  the  realm  of  commerce  Lombard  Street, 
London,  has  been  the  centre  from  which  all 
the  threads  of  trade  move  out  like  a  golden 
web  to  the  uttermost  ends  of  the  earth. 

The  United  States,  Germany  and  France 
have  made  striking  contributions  to  human 
progress,  through  tools,  arts,  science  and  the 
increase  of  comforts  and  conveniences,  not 
to  mention  what  they  have  done  for  democ- 
73 


England's  Place  Among  the  Nations 

racy  and  liberty.  But  when  everything  has 
been  said  in  praise  of  other  nations,  our 
motherland  of  England  still  has  a  supremacy 
that  cannot  be  challenged. 

It  was  from  England  that  the  founders  of 
our  Kepublic  received  the  seed  corn  of  liberty 
that  has  ripened  unto  these  new  harvests. 
It  was  England's  Cromwell,  Pym  and 
Hampden  who  destroyed  that  citadel  of 
iniquity,  the  doctrine  of  the  divine  right  of 
kings.  It  was  the  English  Bacon  who  for- 
mulated the  true  mode  of  scientific  investi- 
gation. It  was  an  English  poet  who  gave  us 
the  plea  for  the  liberty  of  the  printing-press. 
It  was  an  English  philosopher,  Isaac  New- 
ton, who  discovered  the  law  of  gravity  and 
started  the  whole  world  of  science  upon  its 
upward  movement.  And  these  glories  are 
ours.  Hawthorne  calls  his  Travel  Notes  in 
Great  Britain  "  Our  Old  Home,"  but  speaks 
of  his  visits  to  Spain  and  Italy  and  Greece  as 
"  travels  through  foreign  lands."  For  what- 
ever England  was,  before  1620,  belongs  to 
the  Puritans  who  founded  the  New  England, 
just  as  truly  as  to  the  Puritans  who  remained 
in  the  home  nest  and  gave  themselves  to  the 
task  of  making  the  Old  England  more  demo- 
cratic. Their  language  is  our  language,  and 
74 


Her  Relations  to  Germany 

Harapden,  Cromwell  and  Pym  are  our  pa- 
triots and  theirs.  Milton  and  Shakespeare 
are  their  poets  and  our  poets.  Newton  and 
Bacon  belong  to  the  Puritans  on  both  sides 
of  the  Atlantic. 

But,  in  later  years,  it  was  an  English 
scholar,  Charles  Darwin,  who  discovered 
the  law  of  evolution  as  the  seminal  theory 
of  progress,  in  the  world  vegetable  and 
animal,  and  in  the  world  of  man.  The 
engine  lifts  coal  out  of  mines,  and  redeems 
man  from  drudgery,  but  the  engine  is  the 
gift  of  James  Watt.  Too  long  the  world 
shivered  in  cold,  for  lack  of  raiment,  and 
Englishmen,  named  Arkwright  and  Jenney, 
gave  us  the  looms  that  clothed  Asia  with 
garments  of  cotton  and  wool.  It  was  the 
English  Stephenson  who  gave  us  the  loco- 
motive that  has  multiplied  every  German, 
Frenchman  and  American  unto  fifty  man- 
power. England's  contribution  to  social 
progress  has  been  altogether  unique  and 
her  influence  is  beyond  all  measurement. 
In  the  realm  of  vineyards  and  orchards,  if 
you  were  to  take  the  sun  and  the  summer 
out  of  the  sky  there  would  be  nothing  left 
but  frozen  clods.  And  in  the  world  of 
civilization,  if  you  were  to  take  England  and 
75 


England's  Place  Among  the  Nations 

all  Englishmen  for  the  last  three  hundred- 
years  out  of  history,  you  would  have  little 
left  save  a  group  of  serfs,  plebeians  and  forest 
children,  wearing  skins  and  riding  in  an  ox 
cart.  Let  us  recognize  the  world's  indebted- 
ness to  our  motherland. 

Any  adequate  conception  of  England's 
place  among  the  nations  must  begin  with  a 
full  recognition  of  her  work  as  an  architect 
of  States  and  a  builder  of  Commonwealths. 
During  the  last  dozen  years  Germany  lost 
four  hundred  thousand  of  her  sons  through 
emigration,  but  England  sent,  during  the  same 
ten  years,  nearly  two  million  five  hundred 
thousand  of  her  children  to  the  colonies.  It 
may  be  doubted  whether  any  other  nation 
could  have  survived  the  draining  away  of  so 
much  good  blood,  her  strong  boys,  her  hand- 
some girls.  Long  ago  Sir  Charles  Dilke,  one 
of  the  best  equipped  statesmen  of  his  century, 
said,  in  his  study  of  the  Greater  Britain,  that 
if  a  scholar  was  to  understand  England,  he 
must  leave  England  and  spend  a  month  in 
Egypt ;  then  he  must  leave  Egypt  and  spend 
three  months  in  South  Africa  ;  that  he  must 
leave  South  Africa  and  journey  a  thousand 
miles  up  the  Uganda  into  East  Africa  and 
Lake  Nyanza ;  that  he  must  leave  Uganda  and 
76 


Her  Relations  to  Germany 

make  his  way  to  India  and  Ceylon  ;  that  he 
must  leave  Ceylon  and  study  Burmah  ;  that 
he  must  leave  Burmah  and  study  Australia 
and  New  Zealand ;  that  he  must  leave  New 
Zealand  and  study  England's  islands  in  the 
Pacific ;  that  he  must  leave  these  islands  and 
study  Canada. 

It  is  literally  true  that  the  sun  never  sets 
on  the  English  Empire.  With  sublime  im- 
agery Daniel  Webster  spoke  of  the  morning 
drum-beat  of  the  English  soldier,  greeting 
the  rising  sun,  and  sounding  with  the  ad- 
vancing hours  around  the  globe.  Britain 
controls  no  less  than  one-fifth  of  all  the  good 
farming  land  of  the  world.  Within  the 
limits  of  her  Empire  live  four  hundred  and 
thirty  millions  of  people.  Nothing  tests  a 
nation  and  its  greatness  like  the  affection  and 
loyalty  of  its  colonists.  When  the  motherland 
is  unfair  in  the  distribution  of  the  burdens  of 
taxation,  or  harsh  and  cruel  in  the  adminis- 
tration of  its  laws,  then  rebellion  always 
seethes,  and  the  Governor-General  goes  to 
bed  at  night  never  knowing  what  form  the 
revolution  will  take  in  the  morning.  This 
test  is  searching  and  pitiless,  and  to  the 
honour  of  England  be  it  said  that  since  the 
revolt  of  her  American  Colonies  a,  hundred 
77 


England's  Place  Among  the  Nations 

and  forty  years  ago  she  has  met  the  test. 
England  has  built  many  States,  founded 
Commonwealths  in  many  continents,  but  to- 
day the  four  hundred  and  thirty  millions 
have  but  one  heart,  and  that  heart  is  full  of 
love  to  the  motherland.  Soon  England  will 
have  but  one  mind,  and  then  the  stroke  of 
her  foot  will  be  the  stroke  of  an  earthquake, 
and  the  stroke  of  her  hand  like  the  stroke  of 
omnipotence. 

Long  ago  Turgot  said  that  colonies  are 
like  fruits ;  when  they  ripen  they  fall  from 
the  bough.  Doubtless  Turgot  meant  us  to 
understand  that  in  1776  the  American  fruit 
was  ripe,  and  dropped  from  the  mother 
bough.  Some  Germans  have  recently 
thought  that  Canada,  Australia  and  India 
were  ripe,  and  like  fruits,  would  drop  away. 
But  there  is  a  new  thing  under  the  sun. 
Germany  miscalculated,  and  the  Kaiser  was 
poorly  advised  when  the  members  of  his 
cabinet  concluded  that  England  and  Ireland 
were  on  the  verge  of  civil  war,  and  that 
British  colonies  would  take  the  first  op- 
portunity of  deserting  Great  Britain.  As 
Americans,  we  have  all  known  from  the  be- 
ginning that,  while  now  and  then  there  was 
a  warm  discussion  between  the  parent  and 
78 


Her  Relations  to  Germany 

her  children,  when  the  moment  came  for  an 
enemy  to  attack  the  parent,  the  children 
would  enter  the  discussion.  Now  Germany 
understands  that  when  England  is  at  war, 
Canada  is  at  war ;  that  when  England  is  at 
war,  Australia  and  New  Zealand  are  at  war, 
South  Africa  and  India  are  at  war.  Let  no 
man  think  that  the  hundreds  of  millions  liv- 
ing under  the  British  flag  are  either  a  sense- 
less multitude  or  a  mob.  When  danger 
comes,  the  multitude  become  a  regiment,  and 
march  with  armed  feet. 

And  the  very  thing  that  Germany  thought 
to  be  impossible,  she  has  herself  brought 
about.  When  England's  colonies  have  helped 
her  to  fight  this  fierce  war  through  to  a  suc- 
cessful issue,  the  world  will  awaken  to  dis- 
cover two  bands  of  "  United  States,"  the 
one  the  United  States  of  America,  and  the 
other  the  United  States  of  Great  Britain. 
To-day  Canada  and  Australia  elect  no  mem- 
bers to  the  House  of  Commons.  But  to-mor- 
row, after  they  have  shared  in  the  heat  and 
burden  of  the  day,  who  knows  but  that 
Ontario  and  Winnipeg  and  Manitoba,  Mel- 
bourne and  Sydney,  will  be  invited  to  send 
their  representatives  to  the  Imperial  Parlia- 
ment ?  And  then  they  will  not  be  a  loose 
79 


England's  Place  Among  the  Nations 

confederation  of  widely  separated  colonies, 
but  a  closely  bound  Empire,  stretching 
around  the  globe,  while  the  links  that  bind 
these  scattered  States  together  will  have 
been  forged  by  Germany  in  red  heat  on  the 
anvils  of  war. 

For  cities  and  nations,  not  less  than  indi- 
viduals, it  is  the  unexpected  that  happens. 
So  enormous  are  the  resources  of  England, 
France  and  Eussia  that,  despite  Germany's 
great  power,  no  thoughtful  man  can  now 
have  much  doubt  about  the  ultimate  issue  of 
the  great  struggle.  One  of  the  most  im- 
portant results  to  be  hoped  for  will  be  the 
defeat  of  militarism,  and  the  final  emancipa- 
tion of  the  young  men  of  all  the  world  from 
the  iron  yoke  of  war;  but  another  result, 
hitherto  unexpected,  seems  to  be  this  prob- 
ability and  almost  certainty  of  the  United 
States  of  Great  Britain,  with  foundations  for 
the  empire  that  cannot  be  shaken.  In  the 
debate  on  free  trade,  Cobden  once  said  that 
the  results  of  that  economic  conflict  were  so 
far  reaching  that  the  influence  started  by  the 
Free  Corn  Laws  would  make  itself  felt  upon 
the  axe  that  some  Canadian  woodsman  would 
lift  upon  a  tree  thousands  of  miles  distant 
from  the  House  of  Commons.  And  not 
80 


Her  Relations  to  Germany 

otherwise  is  the  unanticipated  influence  of 
Germany's  attack  upon  England — that  of 
strengthening  England  and  her  influence 
over  her  colonies.  But  yesterday  Treitschke 
sneered  and  called  England's  colonies  a  rope 
of  sand ;  to-day  the  fire  of  war  has  turned 
them  into  a  compacted  sandstone. 

What  is  the  explanation  of  this  uprising 
of  the  people  of  India  to  defend  Britain? 
But  yesterday  I  stood  with  the  distinguished 
editor  of  the  University  Magazine  of  Canada 
and  watched  the  students  of  McGill  Univer- 
sity drilling  upon  the  campus.  "What  force 
is  it  that  drew  thirty  thousand  young  men 
from  the  harvest  field  and  the  forest  to  the 
plains  of  Quebec  ?  "What  is  it  that  is  pulling 
another  hundred  thousand  out  of  the  plains 
of  the  great  Northwest  and  turning  all  steps 
towards  Salisbury  Plain  ?  Looking  at  these 
splendid  fellows  one  exclaims :  "  What  re- 
strained strength !  What  manly  men !  What 
quietness  filled  with  fire !  No  ordinary  stuff 
is  here."  From  nothing,  nothing  comes.  It 
means  something  that  Australians,  and  South 
Africans,  and  the  people  of  India  are  turn- 
ing ships  towards  England.  But  friendship 
means  an  exchange  of  gifts.  Devotion  has 
to  be  paid  for.  Love  to  the  parent  is  bought 
81 


England's  Place  Among  the  Nations 

and  paid  for  by  love  and  devotion  to  the 
children.  And  when  these  colonists  are 
willing  to  live  and  die  for  England,  England 
must  have  given  them  great  stores  and  put 
them  under  immeasurable  obligation.  Years 
ago  I  stood  in  Trafalgar  Square  and  from  a 
window  looked  down  upon  King  Edward 
and  his  Queen.  More  than  five  millions  of 
people  were  assembled  along  the  line  of 
march.  In  that  vast  coronation  procession 
were  native  Princes  from  India,  Governors 
and  Judges  from  East  Africa,  and  South 
Africa,  and  Australia,  and  New  Zealand, 
from  the  South  American  colonies,  and  from 
the  Chinese  colonies.  There,  too,  were  lead- 
ers and  rulers,  white,  brown,  yellow,  black, 
red.  But  the  striking  thing  was  that  these 
Colonists  felt  that  the  new  King  and  Queen 
were  not  England's  rulers  alone,  but  were 
also  their  rulers.  And  when  the  hats  went 
up  and  the  air  shook  with  cheers,  no  dele- 
gates or  visitors  showed  more  enthusiasm  or 
loyalty  than  these  men  from  foreign  lands  ! 

When  we  come  to  analyze  the  reasons  for 
colonial  enthusiasm  we  shall  find  one  cause 
in  the  high  standard  of  civil  service.  For 
England  has  had  during  nearly  one  hundred 
and  fifty  years  Governor-Generals  in  India. 
82 


Her  Relations  to  Germany 

Among  the  great  names  that  are  found  on 
the  roll  of  her  colonial  service  are  those  of 
Lawrence,  Clive,  Canning,  Dufferin,  and 
Curzon.  In  the  offices  at  home  and  abroad 
are  the  names  of  some  of  the  most  distin- 
guished scholars  and  patriots  of  whom  his- 
tory has  any  knowledge.  The  high  standard 
of  excellence  can  readily  be  explained.  In 
the  first  place  the  position  of  Governor-Gen- 
eral or  Judge  in  an  English  colony  has  been 
looked  upon  as  an  opportunity  to  serve  the 
motherland.  The  office  has  been  considered 
a  form  of  unique  honour.  Social  position 
has  been  attached  thereto.  The  highest 
standards  of  scholarship  have  been  set  for 
applicants.  Loyal  service  has  been  rewarded 
with  consideration,  public  recognition,  rank, 
money-gifts,  pensions.  The  aim  of  the 
colonial  service  has  been  man-making  and 
state-building. 

The  fairness  and  incorruptibility  of  the 
colonial  courts  and  judges  explains  the  en- 
thusiasm of  the  colonists.  England  has  so 
surrounded  her  judges  in  India  and  Africa 
and  British  Guinea  and  the  South  Sea 
Islands  with  safeguards,  that  any  suspicion 
of  influence  in  connection  with  a  colonial 
court  is  almost  unheard  of.  In  these  foreign 
83 


England's  Place  Among  the  Nations 

capitals,  the  judge  and  governor  is  not  ex- 
pected to  make  friends  among  those  who 
have  to  appear  before  him.  Recently,  the 
story  of  the  decision  of  an  English  court  was 
widely  commented  upon.  There  was  a  law 
in  British  Guiana  for  safeguarding  the  rights 
of  the  poor.  This  law  provided  that  wages 
in  no  case  are  to  be  withheld.  It  so  hap- 
pened that  an  Englishman  had  erected  a 
factory  and  hired  a  watchman  to  guard  the 
works  at  night.  One  day  the  watchman  had 
had  no  sleep,  and  when  night  came  he  was 
overcome  with  fatigue  and  slept ;  when  he 
was  awakened  the  factory  was  on  fire.  The 
owner  was  so  indignant  that  he  refused  to 
pay  the  watchman  the  four  shillings  due  him 
for  his  work.  The  native  appealed  imme- 
diately to  the  English  court.  The  owner  was 
called  in,  severely  rebuked,  and  the  decision 
given  against  him. 

Not  less  swift  and  certain  is  the  execution 
of  English  justice.  Witness  the  mounted 
police  of  Canada.  Their  fame  has  gone  out 
to  all  the  earth.  The  history  of  the  gold 
mines  in  Alaska,  just  this  side  the  British 
line,  is  a  history  of  the  jumping  of  claims,  of 
threats,  intimidation,  arson  and  murder,  by 
reason  of  the  wild  character  of  the  miners. 
84 


Her  Relations  to  Germany 

It  has  generally  taken  one  or  two  years  to 
organize  these  new  camps  and  institute  the 
machinery  of  our  courts  and  justice.  Not  so 
on  the  English  territory.  Almost  before  the 
miners  have  come  to  the  newly  discovered 
camp,  the  mounted  police  arrive.  They  do 
not  wait  for  the  organization  of  a  town.  The 
machinery  of  justice  arrives  with  these  horse- 
men. Justice  is  meted  out  with  even  hand, 
but  with  instant  and  decisive  energy.  And 
the  result  is  loyalty  to  the  motherland  that 
has  given  fair  play  to  the  honest  miner. 

But  the  inevitable  consequence  of  England's 
work  for  the  world  as  a  builder  of  common- 
wealths in  other  countries  has  been  at  home 
the  lack  of  young  men,  whom  she  has  sent 
out  into  the  ends  of  the  earth.  When  Ger- 
many proclaimed  war,  her  sons  had  but  a 
step  to  take  from  the  factory  and  the  field  to 
the  arsenal  and  barracks.  Meanwhile,  in 
saving  the  lives  of  her  colonies,  England  for 
the  moment  was  in  danger  of  losing  her  own 
life,  for  her  sons  were  four  thousand  miles 
away  on  the  wheat  fields  of  Canada ;  seven 
thousand  miles  away  in  North  Africa ; 
twelve  thousand  miles  away  in  Australia. 
England  was  unprepared  also,  because  she 
scarcely  believed  that  war  was  possible,  in 
85 


England's  Place  Among  the  Nations 

this  era  when  all  other  nations  save  Ger- 
many have  practically  committed  them- 
selves to  the  settlement  of  international  dis- 
putes by  an  appeal  to  arbitration. 

We  know  that  Germany  expected  the  war, 
because  she  prepared  for  the  war.  Germany 
has  become  a  military  nation,  making  all 
things  else  subordinate  and  incidental.  What 
Frederick  the  Great  sowed,  the  present-day 
Germany  has  reaped.  The  German  officer 
at  all  social  functions  takes  precedence  before 
the  university  professor,  the  physician,  the 
jurist,  the  author,  the  inventor,  the  financier. 
The  German  student  is  a  recruit  for  the  mili- 
tary camp.  The  peasant,  splendidly  trained 
by  his  enforced  military  service,  resulting  in 
a  marked  efficiency  in  all  his  work  in  civil 
life  thereafter,  is  yet  a  military  slave  to  his 
officer.  Go  where  you  will,  you  are  never 
out  of  sight  of  the  German  fort,  arsenal,  bar- 
racks, parade,  review.  It  is  not  only  "  Ger- 
many over  all,"  but  the  Army  over  all.  As  a 
nation  thinketh  in  its  heart,  so  it  is.  Go 
where  you  will  in  England,  and  you  see 
factories,  foundries,  ship-building,  working- 
men,  and  the  signs  of  manufacturing  are  as 
evident  in  England  as  the  symbols  of  the 
military  in  Germany.  England  has  been  en- 
86 


Her  Relations  to  Germany 

gaged  in  the  manufacture  of  comforts  and 
conveniences,  raiment  and  foods  for  her 
colonies  and  the  world.  Despite  her  lapses 
in  industrial  and  economic  conditions  as 
compared  with  the  new  German  efficiency, 
she  has  earned  her  place  as  the  leading  force 
for  good  in  modern  civilization.  As  to  ship- 
ping and  commerce,  it  need  only  be  said  that 
England  is  the  world's  common  carrier,  han- 
dling even  our  passengers,  and  carrying  Amer- 
ican goods  everywhither.  As  to  her  navy,  her 
battle-ships  have  been,  until  recently,  equal  to 
those  of  France  and  Germany  combined.  It 
is  not  too  much  to  say  that  as  things  go  in 
England,  they  are  to  go  for  the  world.  For 
the  time  has  come  when  Freeman's  prophecy 
has  become  history:  England  through  her 
commerce  and  shipping  has  become  a 
Twentieth  Century  Venice,  in  which  oceans 
and  seas  are  the  canals,  while  her  treasures 
come  from  the  world.  And  envy  of  this  is 
Germany's  frank  and  open  complaint. 

Every  unprejudiced  man,  also,  must  be 
deeply  impressed  by  England's  fairness  to 
her  industrial  rivals.  Germany  imposes  a 
customs  tax  of  an  average  twenty  per  cent, 
against  England.  She  has  built  this  com- 
mercial wall  so  high  that  she  thought  that  no 
87 


England's  Place  Among  the  Nations 

English  manufacturer  could  climb  over  it. 
But  England  allows  the  German  manufacturer 
to  come  into  her  towns  and  sell  his  goods  as 
freely  as  in  Germany.  The  Kaiser  has  left 
nothing  undone  that  he  could  do  to  keep 
English  commercial  travellers  out  of  Ger- 
many, with  the  result  that  they  are  few  and 
far  between,  while  England  fairly  swarms 
with  German  commercial  travellers  and 
traders.  More  striking  than  all  else,  Eng- 
land gives  a  free  port  in  all  her  colonies  to 
German  goods  and  German,  merchants.  To 
all  intents  and  purposes,  it  is  as  if  Germany 
owned  England's  colonies  and  had  all  the 
privileges  of  ownership,  with  the  single  ex- 
ception that  she  is  free  from  the  necessity  of 
paying  the  bills  for  supporting  the  govern- 
ment of  that  colony.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  if 
all  the  English  colonies  were  to-day  turned 
over  to  Germany,  that  country's  merchants 
and  manufacturers  would  have  no  freer  access 
to  the  markets  of  those  colonies,  though  she 
could  burden  them  with  new  taxes.  There 
is  only  one  possible  thing  to  be  gained  by 
Germany  in  attacking,  and,  if  it  were  pos- 
sible, overcoming,  England.  She  would  be 
able  to  say  that  she  is  the  first  naval  and  the 
first  military  power  in  the  world. 
88 


Her  Relations  to  Germany 

But  another  development  in  British  con- 
ditions needs  mention.  Our  travellers,  Eng- 
lish visitors  who  have  been  addressing  us, 
English  reviews,  speak  of  the  political  revolu- 
tion that  has  swept  over  England  in  recent 
years.  By  revolution  these  English  writers 
mean  the  impending  change  of  the  House  of 
Lords  from  an  hereditary  Chamber  to  an 
elective  and  democratic  Chamber.  Subject 
to  certain  conditions,  the  will  of  the  House 
of  Commons  is  now  supreme.  The  common 
people  of  England  are  now  in  practical  con- 
trol. It  seems  strange  that  England  should 
so  recently  have  made  her  government 
democratic,  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the 
Englishmen  on  this  side  of  the  water,  in 
1787,  made  both  their  First  and  Second 
chambers  elective.  France  always  makes 
her  changes  by  revolution,  England  by 
evolution,  and  our  Republic  partly  by  revolu- 
tion and  partly  by  evolution.  During  the 
last  one  hundred  and  twenty-two  years  Eng- 
land by  slow  changes  of  sentiment  has  gone 
towards  a  democratic  House  of  Lords. 

Now  it  is  hardly  possible  to  overestimate 
the  importance  of  this  change  in  the  status 
of  the  House  of  Lords. 

Hitherto  the  House  of  Lords  had  an  Eng- 
89 


England's  Place  Among  the  Nations 

lish  people,  now  the  English  people  have  a 
House  of  Lords.  Kemember  that  England 
still  denies  the  equality  of  men.  Nothing 
can  be  more  absurd  for  an  English  Tory  than 
the  statement  that "  a  workingman  or  trades- 
man is  equal  to  a  peer."  England  looks  on 
the  titled  class  and  the  patrician  as  separated 
from  the  working  plebeians  of  England  by 
an  abyss  as  deep  as  that  which  separated 
Dives  from  Lazarus.  No  people  ever  loved 
a  lord  more  devotedly  than  the  English 
people. 

Now  in  view  of  the  fact  that  English 
society  still  revolves  around  the  king,  the 
horse  and  the  hunting,  and  that  no  trades- 
man could  break  into  society,  how  is  one  to 
explain  the  coming  change  of  the  House  of 
Lords  from  an  hereditary  to  an  elective 
chamber  ?  The  answer  is  simple :  The 
lord's  eldest  son  succeeded  to  his  title  and 
estates,  while  the  four  younger  sons  in  the 
lord's  family  needed  some  recognition.  So, 
the  brightest  boy  out  of  the  four  younger 
sons  entered  Parliament,  and  the  eldest  boy 
entered  the  House  of  Lords.  It  became  a 
strife  between  the  brightest  boy  of  the  four 
younger  sons  and  the  eldest  boy,  and  the 
cleverest  son  steadily  won.  A  little  later 
90 


Her  Relations  to  Germany 

the  most  gifted  boys  out  of  the  forty  millions 
of  Englishmen  were  elected  to  the  House  of 
Commons,  and  they  were  competing  still 
against  the  eldest  son  in  the  family  of  the 
lord.  Of  course,  now  and  then  the  eldest 
son,  like  Rosebery,  carries  genius.  But  if 
you  will  put  the  brightest  men  out  of  forty 
millions  over  against  the  eldest  son  of  six 
hundred  lords,  you  have  genius  pitted 
against  mediocrity,  and  genius  wins.  The 
House  of  Commons  represents  the  selected 
genius  of  Great  Britain ;  the  House  of  Lords 
represents  whatever  the  stork  happens  to 
leave  in  the  cradle  on  the  occasion  of  his 
first  visit  to  the  castle.  The  one  thing  that 
has  saved  the  House  of  Lords  was  the  in- 
jection of  new  blood.  Men  of  commanding 
intellect,  like  Alfred  Harms  worth,  now  Lord 
Northcliffe,  like  Lord  Cromer  of  Egypt  and 
Lord  Curzon  of  India,  have  come  in  by  sheer 
weight  of  personal  ability,  and  achieved  a 
place  and  rule,  and  these  new  men  restore 
the  note  of  genius  to  the  Chamber  that  was 
heavily  handicapped  by  heredity.  The  battle 
has  been  long  and  severe,  but  this  political 
revolution  was  accomplished  by  evolution, 
and,  in  the  long  run,  it  doubtless  will  make 
for  the  stability  of  the  British  empire. 


England's  Place  Among  the  Nations 

Thus,  England,  from  several  points  of 
view,  being  in  a  state  of  transition,  is  at  dis- 
advantage compared  with  the  compacted 
efficiency  of  the  New  Germany ;  but  her 
people  are  steadfast  and  tenacious,  her  re- 
sources immense,  and  she  will  give  grand 
account  of  herself  in  the  present  conflict. 

All  the  discussion  about  who  began  this 
war  is  meaningless,  when  it  is  considered 
that  there  was  only  one  nation  that  was 
ready  for  the  war — Germany ;  while  the  rest 
were  unprepared.  It  is  this  that  lends  mean- 
ing to  Bernhardi's  statement:  "We  must  not 
in  any  case  wait  until  our  opponents  have 
completed  their  arming,  and  decided  that  the 
hour  of  attack  has  come.  Even  English  at- 
tempts at  a  rapprochement  must  not  blind 
us  to  the  real  situation.  "We  may  at  most 
use  them  to  delay  the  necessary  and  inevi- 
table war,  until  we  may  fairly  imagine  we 
have  some  prospect  of  success."  Think  of  a 
man  and  a  nation  uttering  such  words !  And 
then  accusing  England  of  perfidy !  Germany 
thought  the  hour  had  come.  The  Kaiser  was 
advised  that  Ulster  and  England  were  in  peril 
of  civil  war  any  moment.  France  was  quite 
unprepared;  and  a  large  proportion  of  her 
recruits  had  no  rifles  with  which  to  drill. 
92 


Her  Relations  to  Germany 

Serbia  was  exhausted  through  the  Balkan 
war.  Kussia  was  discredited  through  her 
defeat  by  Japan.  Belgium  was  utterly  help- 
less. Plainly,  "  The  Day  "  had  arrived  ! 

Frederick  the  Great  when  he  stole  Silesia 
from  Austria  said  that  a  military  state  like 
Prussia  must  take  what  she  wanted  and  ex- 
plain afterwards.  For  seven  years  the  na- 
tions of  the  world  fought  Frederick,  and 
reduced  Prussia  to  starvation,  and  wrung 
the  king's  heart  with  anguish.  And  what 
has  been,  shall  be  again.  Neither  life  nor 
property  nor  liberty  can  be  safe  in  the 
Twentieth  Century  if  any  ruler  or  any  army 
is  allowed  to  seize  a  land  or  a  city  because 
it  is  fruitful  and  rich,  through  the  labour  of 
another  race.  There  are  many  poor  men 
who  have  succeeded  and  built  a  house  and 
stuffed  it  with  treasures,  but  civilization  is  at 
an  end  if  burglars  are  to  be  allowed  to  or- 
ganize, found  a  factory  for  a  burglar's  kit, 
and  loot  the  house,  saying,  "  Get  what  you 
want,  and  explain  afterwards."  Little  Bel- 
gium with  her  coal  and  iron,  the  new  hema- 
tite iron  deposits  of  Northern  France,  re- 
cently discovered,  are  like  jewel  boxes.  In 
the  Twentieth  Century  steel  is  king.  If 
Germany  can  seize  those  hematite  ores  in 
93 


England's  Place  Among  the  Nations 

Northern  France,  with  Belgium's  coal  and 
seaports,  she  will  have  what  will  build 
navies,  locomotives,  trains.  Then,  no  matter 
who  owns  Gibraltar  and  the  Suez  Canal.  If 
she  can  own  the  best  hematite  iron  ores  in 
Europe,  she  can  blow  up  Gibraltar  and  des- 
troy the  Suez  Canal.  The  lure  of  iron  and 
coal  owned  by  her  rivals  made  a  powerful  ap- 
peal to  Germany,  just  as  Mexico's  treasures 
have  tempted  American  capitalists  to  exploit 
Mexico.  The  envious  man's  finger  twitches 
when  he  perceives  a  piece  of  gold  or  a  jewel 
in  the  possession  of  some  honest  man  who 
has  first  earned,  and  then  saved,  the  treasure. 
In  view  of  all  these  facts  concerning  Eng- 
land and  her  colonies  abroad,  together  with 
our  own  close  relations  with  that  great  mother- 
land of  civilization  and  freedom,  it  is  of  the  first 
importance  that  all  American  citizens  should 
familiarize  themselves  with  the  causes,  the 
course,  and  the  issues  at  stake  in  this  gigantic 
conflict.  And  it  is  especially  important  that 
the  working  people  of  America  should  con- 
sider these  matters :  first,  because  the  poor 
men  pay  the  bills ;  second,  because  it  is  chiefly 
the  working  people  that  are  killed  on  the 
battle-field ;  third,  because  it  is  the  goods 
they  have  produced  that  must  be  destroyed 
94 


Her  Relations  to  Germany 

by  war;  fourth,  because  there  have  been 
many  great  disputes  between  nations  that 
have  been  successfully  decided  by  an  appeal 
to  arbitration,  making  war  unnecessary. 
The  time  has  come  when  the  workingmen 
of  the  world,  united  in  one  brotherhood, 
should  refuse  to  kill  one  another ;  they  must 
recognize  that  they  are  in  a  moral  universe, 
and  take  to  heart  that  fateful  truth :  The 
nation  that  lives  by  the  sword  must  perish 
by  the  sword. 

EESOUECES  OF  GREAT  BRITAIN,  1913 l 
Area  in  square  miles  (European),        121,633. 

(Whole  Empire),  about    10,218,500. 
Population  (European),    45,370,530. 

(Whole  Empire),  about  404,629,000. 

Wealth  (Barker's  1914  estimate), 

$90,000,000,000. 
National  debt,  $3,581,442,105. 
Auimal  revenue,  $972,125,000. 
Army  budget  (1913-1914),  $141,100,000. 
Navy  budget  (1913-1914),  $231,546,500. 
Army  :  Standing,  125,000  ")  7Q,,  ftnn 
Eeserves,  669,000  }  ' 

1  Estimates  chiefly  from  the  War  Gazetteer,  N.  Y.  Even- 
ing Post  Company,  Copyright. 


95 


IV 

Brave  Little  Belgium: 

Why  the  World  Sympathizes 
With  Her 


Behind  the  revolution  of  1830  lay  ten  centuries 
of  recorded  history.  There  are  dark  periods  in 
that  record,  when  it  looked  as  if  the  nationality 
that  owed  its  name  to  Cssar  had  expired  ;  but  a 
little  research  suffices  to  show  that  below  the  sur- 
face, whatever  the  ruler's  name  on  the  current 
coin,  there  survived  the  pride  of  race  which  is 
the  surest  foundation  of  independence.  .  .  .  To 
those  who  admire  the  display  of  courage  and  for- 
titude under  difficulties  the  tenacity  of  the  Belgians 
throughout  their  chequered  history  should  serve 
as  a  model  of  how  an  arduous  fight  for  all  that 
men  hold  most  dear  may  be  won  in  the  teeth  of 
adversity  and  against  seemingly  hopeless  odds. 

DEMETRIUS  C.  BOULGER. 
"  Belgium  of  the  Belgians"  1911. 


IV 

BKAVE  LITTLE  BELGIUM :  WHY  THE 
WORLD  SYMPATHIZES  WITH  HER 

OUR  present  study  concerns  little  Bel- 
gium, her  people,  and  their  part  in  this 
conflict.  Be  the  reasons  what  they  may,  this 
tiny  land  stands  in  the  centre  of  the  stage 
and  holds  the  lime-light.  Once  more  David, 
armed  with  a  sling,  has  gone  up  against 
Goliath.  It  was  an  amazing  spectacle,  this, 
one  of  the  smallest  of  the  States,  battling 
with  the  largest  of  the  giants !  Belgium  has 
a  standing  army  of  58,000  men,  with  reserves 
not  mobilized  of  282,000,  and  Germany,  with 
three  reserves,  perhaps  7,000,000.  Without 
waiting  for  any  assistance,  this  little  Belgian 
standing  army  took  its  stand  against  two 
million  invaders.  It  is  as  if  a  honey  bee  had 
decided  to  attack  an  eagle  come  to  loot  its 
honeycomb.  It  is  as  if  an  antelope  had 
turned  against  a  lion. 

Belgium  has  but  110,000  square  miles  of 
land,  less  than  the  States  of  Massachusetts, 
Rhode  Island  and  Connecticut.     Her  popula- 
tion is  7,500,000,  less  than  the  single  State 
99 


Brave  Little  Belgium 

of  New  York.  You  could  put  twenty-two 
Belgiums  in  our  single  State  of  Texas. 
Much  of  her  soil  is  thin ;  her  handicaps  are 
heavy,  but  the  industry  of  her  people  has 
turned  the  whole  land  into  one  vast  flower 
and  vegetable  garden.  The  soil  of  Minnesota 
and  the  Dakotas  is  new  soil,  and  yet  our 
farmers  there  average  but  fifteen  bushels  of 
wheat  to  the  acre.  Belgium's  soil  has  been 
used  for  centuries,  but  it  averages  thirty- 
seven  bushels  of  wheat  to  the  acre.  If  we 
grow  twenty-four  bushels  of  barley  on  an 
acre  of  ground,  Belgium  grows  fifty  ;  she 
produces  300  bushels  of  potatoes  where  the 
Maine  farmer  harvests  ninety  bushels.  Bel- 
gium's average  population  per  square  mile 
has  risen  to  645  people.  If  Americans 
practiced  intensive  farming;  if  the  popula- 
tion of  Texas  were  as  dense  as  it  is  in 
Belgium— 100,000,000  of  the  people  of  the 
United  States,  Canada  and  Central  America 
could  all  move  to  Texas ;  while  if  our  entire 
country  was  as  densely  populated  as  Bel- 
gium's, everybody  in  the  world  could  live 
comfortably  within  its  limits. 

And  yet,  little   Belgium  has  no  gold  or 
silver  mines,  and  all  the  treasures  of  copper 
and  zinc  and  lead  and  anthracite  and  oil 
100 


Why  the  World  Sympathizes  With  Her 

have  been  denied  her.  Her  treasures  are 
nobly  built  cities,  beautiful  civic  and  ecclesi- 
astical edifices,  world-famous  paintings.  As 
for  the  gold,  it  is  in  the  heart  of  her  people. 
No  other  land  holds  a  race  more  prudent, 
industrious  and  thrifty.  It  is  a  land  where 
everybody  works.  In  the  winter,  when  the 
sun  does  not  rise  until  half -past  seven,  the 
Belgian  cottages  have  lights  in  their  win- 
dows at  five,  and  the  people  are  ready  for 
an  eleven-hour  day.  As  a  rule  all  children 
work  after  twelve  years  of  age.  The  ex- 
quisite pointed  lace  that  has  made  Belgium 
famous  is  wrought  by  women  who  fulfill 
the  tasks  of  the  household  performed  by 
American  women,  and  then  begin  their  task 
upon  those  laces  that  have  sent  their  name 
and  fame  throughout  the  world.  Their 
wages  are  low,  their  work  hard,  but  their 
life  is  so  peaceful  and  prosperous  that  few 
Belgians  ever  emigrate  to  foreign  countries. 
Of  late  they  have  made  their  education  com- 
pulsory, their  schools  free.  It  is  doubtful 
whether  any  other  country  has  made  a 
greater  success  than  they  of  their  system 
of  transportation.  You  will  pay  fifty  cents 
to  journey  some  twenty  odd  miles  out  to 
Roslyn  on  our  Long  Island  railroad,  but  in 
101 


Brave  Little  Belgium 

Belgium  a  commuter  journeys  twenty  miles 
in  to  the  factory  and  back  again  every  night 
and  makes  the  six  double  daily  journeys  of 
the  week  at  an  entire  cost  of  thirty-seven 
and  one-half  cents, — less  than  the  amount 
you  pay  for  the  journey  one  way  for  a  like 
distance  in  this  country. 

Out  of  such  things  has  come  Belgium's 
prosperity.  She  has  the  money  to  buy  goods 
from  other  countries,  and  she  has  the  prop- 
erty to  export  to  foreign  lands.  Last  year 
the  United  States,  with  its  hundred  millions 
of  people,  imported  less  than  two  billion  dol- 
lars, and  exported  two  billion  five  hundred 
million  dollars.  If  our  people  had  been  as 
prosperous  per  capita  as  Belgium,  we  would 
have  purchased  from  other  countries  twelve 
billion  dollars'  worth  of  goods  and  exported 
ten  billion. 

So  largely  have  we  been  dependent  upon 
Belgium  that  many  of  the  engines  used  in 
digging  the  Panama  Canal  came  from  the 
Cockerill  works  that  produce  two  thousand 
of  these  engines  every  year  in  Liege. 

It  is  said  that  the  Belgians  have  the  best 
courts  in  existence.  The  Supreme  Court  of 
Belgium  has  but  one  Justice.  Without  wait- 
ing for  an  appeal,  just  as  soon  as  a  decision 
102 


Why  the  World  Sympathizes  With  Her 

has  been  reached  by  a  lower  court,  while  the 
matters  are  still  fresh  in  mind  and  all  the 
witnesses  and  facts  readily  obtainable,  this 
Supreme  Justice  reviews  all  the  objections 
raised  on  either  side  and  without  a  motion 
from  any  one  annuls  or  sustains  the  decision 
of  the  inferior  court.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  lower  courts  are  open  to  an  immediate 
settlement  of  disputes  between  the  wage- 
earners,  and  newsboys  and  fishermen  are 
almost  daily  seen  going  to  the  judge  for  a 
decision  regarding  a  dispute  over  five  or  ten 
cents.  When  the  judge  has  cross-questioned 
both  sides,  without  the  presence  of  attorneys, 
or  the  necessity  of  serving  a  process,  or  rais- 
ing a  dollar,  the  poorest  of  the  poor  have 
their  wrongs  righted.  It  is  said  that  not 
one  decision  out  of  one  hundred  is  appealed, 
thus  calling  for  the  existence  of  an  attorney. 
To  other  institutions  organized  in  the  in- 
terest of  the  wage-earner  has  been  added  the 
national  savings  bank  system,  that  makes 
loans  to  men  of  small  means,  enabling  the 
farmer  and  the  workingman  to  buy  a  little 
garden  and  build  a  house,  while  at  the 
same  time  insuring  the  workingman  against 
accident  and  sickness.  Belgium  is  a  poor 
man's  country,  it  has  been  said,  because  in- 
103 


Brave  Little  Belgium 

stitutions  have  been  administered  in  the  in- 
terest of  the  men  of  small  affairs. 

But  the  institutions  of  Belgium  and  the 
industrial  prosperity  of  her  people  alone  are 
not  equal  to  the  explanation  of  her  unique 
heroism.  Long  ago,  in  his  Commentaries, 
Julius  Ca3sar  said  that  Gaul  was  inhabited 
by  three  tribes,  the  Belgse,  the  Aquitani,  the 
Celts,  "  of  whom  the  Belgas  were  the  bravest." 
History  will  show  that  Belgians  have  cour- 
age as  their  native  right,  for  only  the  brave 
could  have  survived.  The  southeastern  part 
of  Belgium  is  a  series  of  rock  plains,  and  if 
these  plains  have  been  her  good  fortune  in 
times  of  peace,  they  have  furnished  the 
battle-fields  of  Western  Europe  for  two 
thousand  years.  Northern  France  and  West- 
ern Germany  are  rough,  jagged  and  wooded, 
but  the  Belgian  plains  were  ideal  battle- 
fields. For  this  reason  the  generals  of  Ger- 
many and  of  France  have  usually  met  and 
struggled  for  the  mastery  on  these  wide 
Belgian  plains.  On  one  of  these  grounds 
Julius  Caesar  won  the  first  battle  here  re- 
corded. Then  came  King  Clovis  and  the 
French,  with  their  campaigns;  towards 
these  plains  also  the  Saracens  were  hurry- 
ing when  assaulted  by  Charles  Martel.  On 
104 


Why  the  World  Sympathizes  With  Her 

the  Belgian  plains  the  Dutch  burghers  and 
the  Spanish  armies  led  by  Bloody  Alva, 
fought  out  their  battle.  Hither,  too,  came 
Napoleon,  and  the  great  mound  of  Waterloo 
is  the  monument  to  the  Duke  of  Wellington's 
victory.  It  was  to  the  Belgian  plains,  also, 
that  the  German  general,  last  August,  rushed 
his  troops.  Every  college  and  every  city 
searches  for  some  level  spot  of  land  where 
the  contest  of  athletic  sports  between  op- 
posing teams  may  be  held,  and  for  more  than 
two  thousand  years  the  Belgian  plain  has 
been  the  scene  of  the  great  battles  between 
the  warring  nations  of  Western  Europe. 

Out  of  all  these  collisions  there  has  come 
a  hardy  race,  inured  to  peril,  rich  in  forti- 
tude, loyalty,  patience,  thrift,  self-reliance 
and  persevering  faith.  For  five  hundred 
years  the  Belgian  children  and  youth  have 
been  brought  up  upon  the  deeds  of  noble  re- 
nown, achieved  by  their  ancestors.  If  Julius 
Cassar  were  here  to-day  he  would  wear  Bel- 
gium's bravery  like  a  bright  sword,  girded 
to  his  thigh.  And  when  this  brave  little 
people,  with  a  standing  army  of  fifty-eight 
thousand  men,  single-handed  defied  two 
millions  of  Germans,  it  tells  us  that  Ajax  has 
come  back  once  more  to  defy  the  lightnings. 
105 


Brave  Little  Belgium 

Perhaps  one  or  two  chapters  torn  from  the 
pages  of  Belgium's  history  will  enable  us  to 
understand  her  present-day  heroism,  just  as 
one  golden  bough  plucked  from  the  forest 
will  explain  the  richness  of  the  autumn. 
You  remember  that  Venice  was  once  the 
financial  centre  of  the  world.  Then,  when 
the  bankers  lost  confidence  in  the  navy  of 
Venice  they  put  their  jewels  and  gold  into 
saddle-bags  and  moved  the  financial  centre 
to  Franconian  Nuremberg,  because  its  walls 
were  seven  feet  thick  and  twenty  feet  high. 
Later,  about  1500  A.  D.,  the  discovery  of  the 
New  World  turned  all  the  people  into  races 
of  seagoing  folk,  and  the  English  and  Dutch 
captains  vied  with  the  sailors  of  Spain  and 
Portugal.  None  were  more  prosperous  than 
the  mariners  of  Belgian  Antwerp.  In  1568 
there  were  five  hundred  marble  mansions  in 
that  city  on  the  Scheldt.  Belgium  became  a 
casket  filled  with  jewels. 

Then  it  was  that  Spain  turned  covetous 
eyes  northward.  Sated  with  his  pleasures, 
broken  by  indulgence  and  passion,  the  Em- 
peror Charles  the  Fifth  resigned  his  gold  and 
throne  to  his  son,  King  Philip.  Finding  his 
coffers  depleted,  Philip  sent  the  Duke  of 
Alva,  with  ten  thousand  Spanish  soldiers,  out 
1 06 


Why  the  World  Sympathizes  With  Her 

on  a  looting  expedition.  Their  approach 
tilled  Antwerp  with  consternation,  for  her 
merchants  were  busy  with  commerce  and 
not  with  war.  The  sack  of  Antwerp  by  the 
Spaniards  makes  up  a  revolting  page  in  his- 
tory. Within  three  days  eight  thousand 
men,  women  and  children  were  massacred, 
and  the  Spanish  soldiers,  drunk  with  wine 
and  blood,  hacked,  drowned  and  burned  like 
fiends  that  they  were.  The  Belgian  historian 
tells  us  that  five  hundred  fine  residences  were 
reduced  to  blackened  ruins.  One  character- 
istic incident  will  make  the  event  stand 
out.  When  the  Spaniards  approached  the 
city  a  wealthy  burgher  hastened  the  day  of 
his  son's  marriage.  During  the  ceremony 
the  soldiers  broke  down  the  gate  of  the  city 
and  crossed  the  threshold  of  the  rich  man's 
house.  When  they  had  stripped  the  guests 
of  their  purses  and  gems,  unsatisfied,  they 
killed  the  bridegroom,  slew  the  men  guests, 
carried  the  bride  out  into  the  night.  The 
next  morning  a  young  woman,  crazed  and 
half  clad,  was  found  in  the  street,  searching 
among  the  dead  bodies.  At  last  she  found  a 
youth,  whose  head  she  lifted  upon  her  knees, 
over  which  she  crooned  her  songs,  as  a  young 
mother  soothes  her  babe.  A  Spanish  officer 
107 


Brave  Little  Belgium 

passing  by,  humiliated  by  the  spectacle,  or- 
dered a  soldier  to  use  his  dagger  and  put  the 
girl  out  of  her  misery. 

Having  looted  Antwerp,  the  treasure  chest 
of  Belgium,  the  Spaniards  under  pretence  of 
religion  set  up  the  Inquisition  as  an  organized 
means  of  securing  property.  It  is  a  strange 
fact  that  the  Spaniard  has  excelled  in  cruelty 
as  other  nations  have  excelled  in  art  or 
science  or  invention.  Spain's  cruelty  to  the 
Moors  and  the  rich  Jews  forms  one  of  the 
blackest  chapters  in  history.  Inquisitors  be- 
came fiends.  Moors  were  starved,  tortured, 
burned,  flung  into  wells.  Jewish  bankers 
had  their  tongues  thrust  through  little  iron 
rings ;  then  the  end  of  the  tongue  was  seared 
that  it  might  swell,  and  the  banker  was  led 
by  a  string  in  the  ring  through  the  streets  of 
the  city.  The  women  and  the  children  were 
put  on  rafts  that  were  pushed  out  into  the 
Mediterranean.  When  the  swollen  corpses 
drifted  ashore,  the  plague  broke  out,  and 
when  that  black  plague  spread  over  Spain  it 
seemed  like  the  justice  of  outraged  nature. 
The  expulsion  of  the  Moors  from  Spain  was 
one  of  the  deadliest  blows  ever  struck  at 
science,  commerce,  art  and  literature.  The 
historian  tracks  Spain  across  the  continents 
1 08 


Why  the  World  Sympathizes  With  Her 

by  a  trail  of  blood.  "Wherever  Spam's  hand 
has  fallen  it  has  paralyzed.  From  the  days 
of  Cortez,  wherever  her  captains  have  given 
a  pledge,  the  tongue  that  spake  has  been  mil- 
dewed with  lies  and  treachery.  The  wild- 
est beasts  are  not  in  the  jungle ;  man  is  the 
lion  that  rends,  man  is  the  leopard  that  tears, 
man's  hate  is  the  serpent  that  poisons,  and 
the  Spaniard  entered  Belgium  to  turn  a  gar- 
den into  a  wilderness. 

Within  one  year,  1568,  Antwerp,  that  be- 
gan with  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  thou- 
sand people,  ended  it  with  fifty  thousand. 
Multitudes  were  put  to  death  by  the  sword 
and  stake,  but  many,  many  thousands  fled  to 
England,  to  begin  anew  their  lives  as  man- 
ufacturers and  mariners;  and  for  years 
Belgium  was  one  quaking  peril,  an  inferno, 
whose  torturers  were  Spaniards.  The  visitor 
in  Antwerp  is  still  shown  the  rack  upon 
which  they  stretched  the  merchants  that  they 
might  yield  up  their  hidden  gold.  The 
Painted  Lady  may  be  seen.  Opening  her 
arms,  she  embraces  the  victim.  The  Span- 
iard forced  the  merchant  into  the  deadly  em- 
brace. As  the  iron  arms  concealed  in  velvet 
folded  together,  one  spike  passed  through 
each  eye,  another  through  the  mouth,  another 
109 


Brave  Little  Belgium 

through  the  heart.  The  Painted  Lady's  lips 
were  poisoned,  so  that  a  kiss  was  fatal. 
Another  instrument  of  torture  was  the  dun- 
geon whose  sides  were  forced  together  by 
screws,  so  that  each  day  the  victim  saw  his 
cell  growing  less  and  less,  and  knew  that 
soon  he  would  be  crushed  to  death.  Lit- 
erally thousands  of  innocent  men  and  women 
were  burned  alive  in  the  market-place. 

There  is  no  more  piteous  tragedy  in  history 
than  the  story  of  the  decline  and  ruin  of  this 
superbly  prosperous,  literary  and  artistic 
country,  and  yet  out  of  the  ashes  came  new 
courage.  Burned,  broken,  the  Belgians  were 
not  beaten.  Pushed  at  last  into  Holland, 
they  united  their  fortunes  with  the  Dutch ; 
together  they  cut  the  dykes  of  Holland,  and 
let  in  the  ocean,  and  clinging  to  the  dykes 
with  their  finger-tips,  fought  their  way  back 
to  the  land.  Yet,  no  sooner  had  the  last  of 
the  Spaniards  gone  than  out  of  their  rags 
and  poverty  the  brave  men  founded  a  uni- 
versity as  a  monument  to  the  providence  of 
God  in  delivering  them  out  of  the  hands  of 
their  enemies.  The  Sixteenth  Century,  in  the 
form  of  a  brave  knight,  wears  little  Belgium 
and  Holland  like  a  red  rose  upon  his  heart. 

But  some  of  you  will  say  that  the  Belgian 
no 


Why  the  World  Sympathizes  With  Her 

people  must  have  been  rebels  and  guilty  of 
some  excess,  and  that  had  they  remained 
quiescent,  and  not  fomented  treason,  no  such 
fate  could  have  overtaken  them  at  the  hands 
of  Spain.  Very  well.  I  will  take  a  youth 
who,  at  the  beginning,  believed  in  Charles 
the  Fifth,  a  man  who  was  as  true  to  his 
ideals  as  the  needle  to  the  pole — Count  Eg- 
mont,  who  had  bravely  fought  in  the  armies 
of  Charles,  but  who  opposed  the  despotism 
and  "  religious "  cruelties  of  Philip.  One 
day  the  "  Bloody  Council "  decreed  the  death 
of  Egmont  and  his  associate,  Count  Horn. 
Immediately  afterwards,  the  Duke  of  Alva 
sent  an  invitation  to  Egmont  to  be  the  guest 
of  honour  at  a  banquet  in  his  own  house. 
A  servant  from  the  palace  that  night  deliv- 
ered to  the  Count  a  slip  of  paper,  containing 
a  warning,  to  take  the  fleetest  horse  and  flee 
the  city,  and  from  that  moment  not  to  eat 
or  sleep  without  pistols  at  his  hand.  To  all 
this  Egmont  responded  that  no  monster  ever 
lived  who  could,  with  an  invitation  of  hospi- 
tality, trick  a  patriot.  Like  a  brave  man, 
he  went  to  the  Duke's  palace.  He  found 
the  guests  assembled,  but  when  he  had 
handed  his  hat  and  cloak  to  the  servant, 
Alva  gave  a  sign,  and  from  behind  the 
in 


Brave  Little  Belgium 

curtains  came  Spanish  musketeers,  who  de- 
manded his  sword.  For  instead  of  a  ban- 
quet hall,  the  Count  was  taken  to  a  cellar, 
fitted  up  as  a  dungeon.  Already  Egmont 
had  all  but  died  for  his  country.  He  had 
used  his  ships,  his  trade,  his  gold,  for  right- 
ing the  people's  wrongs.  He  was  a  man  of 
large  family — a  wife  and  eleven  children, 
and  the  people  loved  him  as  to  idolatry. 
But  Alva  was  inexorable.  He  had  made  up 
his  mind  that  the  merchants  and  burghers 
had  still  much  hidden  gold,  and  if  he  killed 
their  bravest  and  best,  terror  would  fall  upon 
all  alike,  and  the  gold  he  needed  would  be 
forthcoming.  That  all  the  people  might  wit- 
ness the  scene,  he  took  his  prisoners  to  Brus- 
sels and  decided  to  behead  them  in  the  public 
square.  In  the  evening  Egmont  received  the 
notice  that  his  head  would  be  chopped  off 
the  next  day.  A  scaffold  was  erected  in  the 
public  square.  That  evening  he  wrote  a 
letter  that  is  a  marvel  of  restraint : — 

"SiRE — I  have  learned  this  evening  the 
sentence  which  your  majesty  has  been 
pleased  to  pronounce  upon  me.  Although 
I  have  never  had  a  thought,  and  believe 
myself  never  to  have  done  a  deed  which 
would  tend  to  the  prejudice  of  your  service, 
112 


Why  the  World  Sympathizes  With  Her 

or  to  the  detriment  of  true  religion,  never- 
theless I  take  patience  to  bear  that  which  it 
has  pleased  the  good  God  to  permit.  There- 
fore, I  pray  your  majesty  to  have  compas- 
sion on  my  poor  wife,  my  children  and  my 
servants,  having  regard  to  my  past  service. 
In  which  hope  I  now  commend  myself  to  the 
mercy  of  God.  From  Brussels,  ready  to  die, 
this  5th  of  June,  1568. 

"  LAMORAL  D'  EGMONT." 

Thus  died  a  man  who  did  as  much  prob- 
ably for  Flanders  as  John  Eliot  for  England, 
or  Lafayette  for  France,  or  Samuel  Adams 
for  this  young  Republic. 

And  now  out  of  all  her  glorious  past 
comes  woe  to  Belgium  once  more.  Deso- 
lation has  come  like  the  whirlwind,  and  de- 
struction like  a  tornado.  But  ninety  days 
ago,  and  Belgium  was  a  hive  of  industry,  and 
in  the  fields  were  heard  the  harvest  songs. 
Suddenly,  Germany  thrust  at  Belgium  to 
strike  France.  The  whole  world  has  but 
one  voice,  "Belgium  has  innocent  hands." 
When  the  lover  of  Germany  is  asked  to 
explain  Germany's  breaking  of  her  solemn 
treaty  upon  the  neutrality  of  Belgium,  the 
German  pleads  the  necessity  of  his  own  in- 
terests. Merchants  honour  their  written  ob- 
ligations. True  citizens  consider  their  word 


Brave  Little  Belgium 

as  good  as  their  bond.  Prussia  gave  treaty, 
and  in  the  presence  of  God  and  the  civilized 
world,  entered  into  a  solemn  covenant  with 
and  for  Belgium's  neutrality — a  covenant 
afterwards  confirmed  by  the  new  German 
Empire.  To  the  end  of  time,  the  German 
must  expect  this  taunt — "Worthless  as  a 
German  treaty ! " 

Scarcely  less  black  are  the  few  perfectly 
ascertained  examples  of  cruelty  wrought 
upon  non-resisting  Belgians.  In  Brooklyn 
lives  a  Belgian  woman.  She  planned  to 
return  home  in  late  July  to  visit  a  father 
who  had  suffered  paralysis,  an  aged  mother 
and  a  sister  who  nursed  both.  When  the 
Germans  decided  to  burn  that  village  in 
Eastern  Belgium,  they  did  not  wish  to  burn 
alive  this  old  and  helpless  man  and  his  wife, 
so  they  bayonetted  the  old  man  and  woman, 
and  the  daughter  that  nursed  them. 

But,  let  us  judge  not,  that  we  be  not 
judged.  This  is  one  example  of  atrocity 
that  you  and  I  might  be  able  to  person- 
ally prove.  But  every  loyal  German  in  the 
country  may  make  answer :  "  These  soldiers 
were  drunk  with  wine  and  blood.  Such  an 
atrocity  misrepresents  Germany  and  her  sol- 
diers. The  breaking  of  Germany's  treaty 
114 


Why  the  World  Sympathizes  With  Her 

with  Belgium  represents  the  dishonour  of 
a  military  ring,  and  not  the  perfidy  of  sixty- 
eight  million  people.  We  ask  that  judgment 
be  postponed  until  all  the  facts  are  in." 

Meanwhile,  the  man  who  loves  his  fellows 
walks  across  the  fields  of  broken  Belgium  at 
midnight  in  his  dreams.  All  through  the 
night  air  there  comes  the  sob  of  Kachel, 
weeping  for  her  children,  because  they  are 
not.  In  moods  of  bitterness,  of  doubt  and 
despair  the  heart  cries  out,  "How  could  a 
just  God  permit  such  cruelty  upon  innocent 
Belgium  ?  "  No  man  knows.  "  Clouds  and 
darkness  are  round  about  God's  throne." 
The  spirit  of  evil  caused  this  war,  but  the 
Spirit  of  God  may  bring  good  out  of  it,  just  as 
the  summer  can  repair  the  ravages  of  winter. 

Yet  the  heart  bleeds  for  Belgium ;  for 
Brussels,  the  third  most  beautiful  city  in 
Europe;  for  Louvain,  once  rich  with  its 
libraries,  cathedrals,  statues,  paintings,  mis- 
sals, manuscripts — now  a  ruin.  Alas !  for 
the  lost  harvests  and  the  smoking  villages ! 
Alas,  for  the  Cathedral  that  is  marred,  and 
the  library  that  is  a  ruin.  Where  the  angel 
of  happiness  was,  there  stalk  Famine  and 
Death.  Gone,  the  Land  of  Grotius !  Per- 
ished or  "  conveyed  "  away  the  paintings  of 


Brave  Little  Belgium 

genius !    Where  the  wheat  waved,  now  the 
hillsides  are  billowy  with  graves. 

But  God  reigns.  Perchance  Belgium  is 
slain  like  the  Saviour,  that  militarism  may 
die  like  Satan.  Without  shedding  of  inno- 
cent blood  there  is  no  remission  of  the 
sins  of  tyranny  and  greed.  There  is  no 
wine  without  the  crushing  of  the  grapes 
of  life.  Soon  Liberty,  God's  dear  child, 
will  stand  within  the  scene  and  comfort  the 
desolate.  Falling  upon  the  great  world's 
altar  stairs,  in  this  hour  when  wisdom  is 
ignorance,  and  the  strongest  man  clutches  at 
dust  and  straw,  let  us  believe,  with  faith  vic- 
torious over  tears,  that  some  time  God  will 
gather  broken-hearted  little  Belgium  into 
His  arms  and  comfort  her  as  a  father  com- 
forteth  his  well-beloved  child. 


EESOUECES  OF  BELGIUM,  1913 l 
Area  in  square  miles,  110,659. 
Population,  7,571,387. 
Wealth,  $9,000,000. 
National  debt,  $741,891,615. 
Annual  revenue,  $161,462,705. 
Army  budget  (1913-1914),  $20,219,250. 
Army  :  Standing,     58,000  )  oin  Oftn 
Eeserves,   282,000  j  diu'ui 

1  Estimates  from  the  War  Gazetteer,   N.  Y.  Evening 
Post  Company,  Copyright. 

116 


The  New  Russia : 
Her  Ambition  for  a  Seaport 


Russians  often  single  out  laziness  and  the  want 
of  practical  energy  as  a  national  failing  [of  theirsj. 
Well  and  good  :  but  the  defence  of  Sevastopol, 
the  creation  of  the  Trans-Siberian  Railway,  and 
the  transport  of  troops  over  a  single  line  during 
[the  Russo-Japanese]  war  time,  are  examples  of 
abnormal  energy  in  the  domain  of  achievement. 
.  .  .  The  Russian  Empire  is  the  result  of  some- 
thing, and  it  is  there.  .  .  . 

While  as  to  the  general  category  of  faults  and 
qualities,  virtues  and  vices,  the  Russians  are  on  a 
par  with  other  nations,  they  have  a  peculiar  and 
unique  gift  of  goodness  and  faith,  in  the  nature  of 
their  people,  which  is  difficult  to  match  in  any 
other  country. 

MAURICE  BARING. 
"The  Mainsprings  of  Russia,"  1914. 


THE  NEW  RUSSIA  :    HER  AMBITION 
FOR  A  SEAPORT 

TOLSTOI  once  said:  "Russia  is  not  a 
state ;  Russia  is  a  world."  England  has 
vast  colonies,  but  Russia's  farming  lands  in- 
clude one-sixth  of  the  resources  of  our  earth. 
These  lands  also  are  compact,  making  her 
the  most  closely  knitted  country  of  which 
we  have  any  knowledge.  England  controls 
nearly  as  much  territory,  but  England's  em- 
pire is  loosely  united  because  her  colonies  are 
scattered  over  five  continents. 

Never  was  there  a  moment  when  the  war 
eagles  of  Rome  made  a  flight  of  more  than 
2,500  miles  from  east  to  west.  Even  to-day 
the  American  eagle  journeying  from  the 
easternmost  point  of  Maine  to  the  western- 
most point  of  Puget  Sound  compasses  but 
3,400  miles.  It  would  take  three  times  the 
territory  of  the  United  States  to  cover  Russia. 
Her  eagles,  starting  on  the  Baltic  Sea,  jour- 
ney seven  thousand  miles  to  that  port  on  the 
119 


The  New  Russia 

Pacific  where  the  Russian  railway  has  its  ter- 
minus. It  is  more  than  three  thousand  miles 
also  between  Russia's  northern  boundary  on 
the  Arctics  and  her  cotton  fields  on  the  shores 
of  the  Caspian.  Western  Russia  holds  more 
than  half  of  the  good  farming  land  of  Europe. 
Scandinavia  and  Great  Britain,  Germany 
and  France,  Spain  and  Italy,  Austria  and 
the  Balkans,  with  the  lesser  nations  thrown 
in,  have  smaller  pastures  and  meadows  than 
European  Russia. 

As  to  Russian  resources  in  Asia,  remem- 
ber that  the  great  forests  and  the  wheat  and 
corn  and  grazing  lands  of  Asia  are  on  the 
north  of  the  Himalayas  and  above  the  north- 
western mountainous  ranges  separating 
China  from  Turkestan  and  Siberia.  This 
Republic  prides  itself  on  the  black  corn  land 
in  Illinois  and  Iowa,  but  Russia  has  ten 
corn  States  in  the  "  black-earth  belt."  This 
Republic  and  Canada  have  certain  wheat 
lands  in  the  Dakotas  and  Manitoba,  but  Rus- 
sia has  twelve  such  wheat  States.  This 
country  expects  much  from  the  developments 
of  its  forests  in  the  Puget  Sound,  but  the 
world's  great  forests  of  pine,  spruce  and 
cedar,  of  oak,  maple  and  elm  are  in  Siberia. 

From  nothing,  nothing  comes.  Back  of 
120 


Her  Ambition  for  a  Seaport 

this  vast  land,  this  mighty  people  with  their 
vast  resources,  lie  many  historic  forces. 
Among  the  builders  of  Russia  we  must  make 
a  large  place  for  that  wonderful  man,  Peter 
the  Great.  All  that  Cromwell  did  for  Eng- 
land or  Washington  for  America,  Peter  did 
for  Russia — even  more.  He  took  a  mob  of 
races,  differing  in  blood,  language  and  relig- 
ion, and  began  the  work  of  compacting 
them  into  a  nation.  His  life  reads  like  a 
veritable  romance.  Like  Moses,  he  was  con- 
demned to  death  by  political  enemies  and 
was  saved  by  the  wit  and  courage  of  his 
mother.  Like  David,  he  once  became  the 
champion  of  his  people.  Like  Horatius, 
single-handed  he  once  defended  a  bridge. 
Coming  to  the  throne,  he  met  the  ambas- 
sadors of  other  nations,  and  decided  that 
something  was  wrong  with  his  own  country. 
Without  national  vanity  he  determined  to  go 
out  in  the  world  and  see  what  he  could  learn 
about  ways  of  improving  his  realms.  For 
a  year  he  travelled  in  Austria,  Germany,  the 
Netherlands  and  England.  To  know  his 
own  land,  he  went  on  foot,  in  city  and  coun- 
try, disguised  as  a  Russian  student ;  went  into 
the  field  to  talk  with  peasants  ;  lingered  on 
the  wharves  with  sailors,  hung  around  the 
121 


The  New  Russia 

wine-shops,  where  the  poor  congregate ;  met 
business  men  in  the  market-place.  He  had 
a  hungry  mind,  and  every  fact  was  grist  to 
his  hopper.  Having  seen  the  Dutch  fleets,  he 
determined  to  learn  ship-building,  and  soon 
possessed  himself  of  the  drawings  of  the  best 
ship-builders  in  Holland.  He  went  into  the 
iron  foundries  and  mastered  the  processes ; 
into  the  rope- walks,  and  learned  that  trade ; 
into  the  spinning  mills,  and  studied  the  looms. 
He  went  into  the  hospitals  and  began  to 
study  medicine  and  surgery.  One  day  he 
found  a  dentist,  and  being  crowded  for  time 
he  gave  only  one  hour  to  the  investigation, 
but  before  he  went  away  he  bought  all  the 
dentist's  instruments,  and  one  of  the  first 
things  he  did  when  he  went  to  his  capital 
was  to  tie  down  in  a  chair  a  noble  whom  he 
disliked,  and  Peter  filled  his  teeth  by  force. 

No  difficulty  could  daunt  his  courage,  and 
no  obstacle  could  stop  his  progress.  A  mon- 
arch, Peter  was  not  afraid  to  ask  questions, 
but  among  more  cultivated  people  his  frank- 
ness was  often  embarrassing.  One  night  in 
London,  after  he  became  well  known,  the 
great  Kussian  went  to  a  diplomatic  dinner. 
Across  the  table  sat  a  lord,  wearing  a  wig ; 
standing  up,  Peter  reached  across  the  table, 
122 


Her  Ambition  for  a  Seaport 

and,  with  an  "Excuse  me,"  lifted  the  wig 
from  the  noble's  bald  head,  and  having 
studied  it  a  few  minutes,  threw  it  on  the 
floor,  saying,  "  It  is  not  fit  for  a  gentleman's 
wearing."  One  day  he  saw  twenty  barris- 
ters, lawyers  and  judges,  with  their  gowns 
and  wigs,  crossing  the  green  in  front  of 
Temple  Bar.  When  the  procession  had  dis- 
appeared in  the  court  room,  Peter  asked  who 
these  twenty  men  were.  "  Lawyers,"  was  the 
instant  answer.  "  What  ?  Twenty  lawyers 
and  only  one  England  !  Why,  I  have  only 
two  lawyers  in  all  Russia,  and  I  am  going  to 
behead  one  of  those  as  soon  as  I  get  home." 

In  Sweden,  Peter  was  impressed  by  the 
solidity  of  regiments  trained  in  the  land  of 
Gustavus  Adolphus.  Going  home  he  told 
the  queen  that  the  only  way  he  could  learn 
how  to  develop  soldiers  was  to  have  a  fight 
with  the  Swedes,  so  that  he  might  master 
their  methods.  Accordingly  he  proceeded 
to  pick  a  quarrel  with  these  soldiers,  who 
were  then  the  leaders  of  the  world.  When 
the  news  came  that  the  Swedish  regiments 
had  defeated  his  generals,  he  shouted,  "  Ex- 
cellent !  Now  that  will  wake  up  my  sol- 
diers." Hurrying  to  the  front  Peter  waited 
until  the  day  had  ended.  Then  the  Russian 
123 


The  New  Russia 

spent  the  night  with  his  generals,  studying 
just  how  the  Swedish  generals  had  moved 
their  troops  and  won  their  victory.  A  few 
days  later  he  wrote  home  saying,  "  At  last 
I  have  beaten  the  Swedes ;  to  be  sure  I  have 
four  Kussians  to  one  Swede,  but  to-morrow 
or  the  next  day  I  will  beat  them  man  for 
man." 

His  letters  to  the  queen  are  self -revelatory. 
One  day  he  learned  that  during  his  absence 
his  wife  had  given  the  children  certain 
liberties  that  he  had  forbidden.  That  night 
he  sent  her  a  letter  by  a  special  messenger  : 
"  My  dear,  I  love  thee  like  mine  own  soul, 
but  I  will  dust  thy  jacket  upon  my  return." 

Once  he  returned  from  Holland  by  water 
and  explored  the  shores  of  the  Baltic  ;  far  to 
the  north  he  sailed  into  the  mouth  of  his  own 
River  Neva  ;  he  found  waters  as  blue  as  the 
Rhone  where  it  leaps  like  an  arrow  from 
Lake  Geneva. 

The  whole  scene,  as  far  as  the  eye  could 
reach,  was  one  vast  swamp,  filled  with  reeds 
and  rushes  ;  but  there  he  determined  to  build 
a  city.  He  brought  in  an  army  of  flatboats 
and  dredges,  and  drove  piles  from  thirty  to 
fifty  feet  in  length ;  upon  these  piles  huge 
slabs  of  granite  were  placed.  He  multiplied 
124 


Her  Ambition  for  a  Seaport 

workmen  until  there  were  a  hundred  thou- 
sand men  labouring  upon  that  swamp.  At 
last  the  foundations  were  ready  for  a  vast 
city,  and  here  he  founded  St.  Petersburg. 
He  reared  his  palace  in  the  midst  of  the 
workingmen's  sheds. 

One  summer  he  ordered  a  census  of  all  the 
large  towns  in  Russia.  From  this  census  he 
selected  the  names  of  a  hundred  thousand 
bankers,  merchants,  manufacturers  and  work- 
men, all  picked  men.  Shortly  afterwards 
each  one  of  these  men  received  a  notice  com- 
manding him  to  remove  to  St.  Petersburg ; 
and  they  moved.  Suddenly  St.  Petersburg 
rose  like  an  exhalation  from  the  seas.  No 
visitor  to  the  Russian  capital  but  exclaims  as 
his  first  remark,  "  "What  folly  to  build  a  great 
city  in  the  midst  of  these  marshes  !  " 

Peter  knew  that  he  had  land  enough,  and 
that  what  he  needed  was  water,  but  he  over- 
looked the  fact  that  the  ice  locked  his 
harbour  for  six  months  every  year,  and  that 
it  is  impossible  for  ships  to  compete  with  ice 
and  snow.  Half  convinced  of  his  defeat, 
Peter's  mind  began  to  teem  and  seethe  with 
new  schemes.  He  \vanted  to  cover  Russia 
with  a  network  of  factories  and  shops,  but, 
overworked,  he  broke  down  nervously.  One 
125 


The  New  Russia 

morning,  suddenly  overtaken  by  the  keenest 
torture,  he  shouted  to  his  secretary  :  "  I  am 
dying.  Bring  me  pen  and  ink."  He  wrote 

three  words  :  "  Give  all  to "  gasped 

twice,  and  fell  back  dead. 

But,  having  found  his  country  a  mere  field, 
a  group  of  unorganized  races,  Peter  left  a 
mighty  people,  awake,  and  started  upward 
along  the  paths  of  social  progress. 

Then  came  the  great  Catherine,  his 
widowed  Empress,  whose  nervous  energy 
seemed  inexhaustible,  whose  youth  was  al- 
most eternal,  and  who  at  sixty-five  went 
through  her  most  passionate  experience  in 
love. 

The  Eomanoffs  culminated  in  Alexander 
the  Second,  who  came  to  the  throne  in  1855, 
following  his  father,  Nicholas  the  First. 
One  day  this  monarch  discovered  that  he  had 
been  deceived  by  his  officers.  A  reception 
had  been  arranged  for  him  in  one  city  lying 
to  the  east.  But  an  ambitious  under  servant 
frustrated  the  plans  of  the  Prime  Minister, 
and  deflected  Alexander's  journey  to  the 
west.  That  morning  the  monarch  saw  his 
people  as  they  were,  naked,  shoeless,  bitter, 
wretched  beyond  words.  Apologizing  for  the 
mistake,  the  officer  then  drove  his  Emperor 
126 


Her  Ambition  for  a  Seaport 

to  the  village  for  which  the  visit  had  been 
planned,  and  lo,  drawn  up  on  the  sidewalk 
were  people  well  dressed,  with  children  well 
kept.  It  was  a  select  exhibit,  while  soldiers 
in  the  alleys  and  side  streets  kept  back  the 
poor,  that  the  ruler  might  not  realize  the 
facts  concerning  his  people.  In  that  hour 
the  scales  fell  from  the  eyes  of  Alexander. 
It  became  impossible  for  him  to  feast  in  his 
palace  while  the  peasants  famished.  His 
ambrosia  turned  to  ashes  and  soot,  and  the 
wine  upon  his  lips  became  gall.  In  1861  he 
emancipated  twenty  million  serfs. 

But  there  were  those  who  did  not  want 
these  reforms.  Alexander  was  slain  by  a 
bomb.  Lying  upon  his  table  was  the  draft 
of  a  new  bill  breaking  up  the  vast  estates, 
and  distributing  the  land  among  the  people. 
Just  at  the  moment  when  his  reforms  were 
ripened,  assassins  carried  him  off.  The  crime 
was  attributed  to  Nihilists ;  there  are  some 
who  believe  that  it  was  planned  by  aristocrats, 
who  did  not  want  to  have  their  heel  lifted 
from  the  neck  of  the  serf. 

The  land  question  is  still  the  great  problem 
of  Russia.  It  was  the  land  question  that  pro- 
duced the  English  Revolution  under  Cromwell, 
that  broke  up  the  estates,  and  gave  the  English 
127 


The  New  Russia 

peasant  and  yeoman  a  chance  at  the  soil. 
In  France  two  classes,  including  a  little  hand- 
ful of  aristocrats  and  bishops,  owned  two- 
thirds  of  all  the  lands  of  France,  while  the 
fifteen  millions  owned  almost  nothing,  and 
the  land  question  produced  the  French  Kevo- 
lution  and  destroyed  the  Bastile.  In  Mexico 
the  revolution  will  never  be  settled  until  the 
land  question  is  settled.  There  are  single 
families  in  Mexico  who  own  from  one  to  ten 
million  acres  of  rich  land,  while  there  are 
twelve  million  Indians  who  have  no  stake  in 
the  soil  and  are  wanderers  upon  the  face  of 
the  land,  the  prey  of  any  adventurer,  ready 
to  follow  any  revolutionist. 

In  the  upheavals  incident  to  this  discussion, 
of  late  the  Eussian  Government  has  vested 
the  land  in  the  Mir  or  village  community. 
The  head  trustee  of  a  township  apportions  to 
the  peasant  his  plot  of  ground.  The  in- 
justices are  so  grievous  that  when  one  trustee 
became  angry  because  the  peasants  were 
quarrelling  over  who  should  have  the  rich 
farms  in  the  valley,  he  cut  all  the  farms  into 
strips,  and  gave  each  peasant  in  the  township 
a  strip  in  the  farm,  until  each  family  had  a 
strip  three  and  a  half  feet  wide.  Meanwhile, 
under  this  new  law,  the  upper  class,  that  has 
128 


Her  Ambition  for  a  Seaport 

had  education  and  experience,  has  lost  its 
leadership. 

In  our  own  South,  after  the  slaves  had 
been  emancipated,  the  Southern  States  were 
at  first  without  leaders.  The  planter  returned 
to  his  five  thousand  acres,  but  he  was  with- 
out slaves,  without  workingmen,  without 
money,  without  tools,  until  his  farm  grew  up 
in  weeds  and  many  a  man  died  of  a  broken 
heart.  Meanwhile  the  coloured  people,  be- 
coming rulers,  voted  in  one  year  to  bridge  all 
streams,  rebuild  all  schoolhouses,  buy  fine 
furniture  for  all  city  halls,  and  in  a  little  time 
certain  sections  were  knee-deep  in  mortgages, 
and  the  land  bankrupt. 

Just  now  Russia  is  passing  through  a  simi- 
lar transition  period.  The  gentleman  class 
has  decayed.  The  peasants  are  not  yet  pos- 
sessed of  capacity  and  experience.  And 
these  two  problems,  the  land  question  and 
how  to  find  leaders  in  the  new  era,  are  big 
with  destiny  for  the  Russian  people.  Fortu- 
nately, at  last  the .  people  are  beginning  to 
learn  and  to  be  allowed  to  take  the  right 
path.  No  thoughtful  man  can  fail  to  ob- 
serve that  time  and  events  will  cure  these 
ills  in  Russia.  The  faults  are  the  faults  of 
inexperience,  and  the  barrenness  is  the  bar- 
129 


The  New  Russia 

renness  of  a  new  vineyard,  just  planted. 
Time  is  the  husbandman  who  will  ripen  the 
fruits  of  liberty,  prosperity  and  intelligence. 
Yet  the  obstacles,  even  in  recent  years, 
have  been  almost  insurmountable.  Out  of 
the  enormous  expanse  of  territory  and  people 
have  bred  seething  conditions  giving  rise  to 
the  evils  of  bureaucracy.  The  Czar  who 
rules  over  170,000,000  of  people,  and  whose 
sceptre  extends  over  a  land  three  times  as 
large  as  the  United  States,  must  of  necessity 
delegate  much — even  the  most — of  his  au- 
thority. In  little  lands  it  is  quite  possible 
for  the  Mayor  to  understand  all  the  people 
of  his  village,  and  for  the  Governor  to  under- 
stand his  State — but  not  in  Eussia.  Slowly, 
therefore,  as  a  concession  to  distance  and 
space,  the  system  of  bureaucracy  has  devel- 
oped. Were  it  possible  for  you  to  rise  in 
some  aeroplane  above  Kussia  and  look  down 
upon  the  land,  you  would  see  a  vast  web  of 
governmental  powers  stretching  its  spider- 
like  lines  into  the  remotest  corners  of  the  land. 
Along  the  lines  of  this  spider-web  vibrates 
the  behest  of  an  iron  ruler  like  Plehve  who, 
as  minister  of  the  interior,  exercised  such 
cruel  severity  to  the  Jews,  the  Armenian 
Church,  the  liberal-minded  nobility,  and  the 
130 


Her  Ambition  for  a  Seaport 

peasants,  that  in  1904  he  was  assassinated. 
Under  this  system,  also,  spies  of  faithless 
duplicity  and  merciless  policemen  are  de- 
veloped, whose  type  is  Victor  Hugo's  Javert. 
Reformers,  therefore,  soon  pass  under  sus- 
picion. Every  town  has  its  suspected  list. 
Liberty  of  speech  is  impossible. 

Witness  the  Russian  student  from  Munich, 
who  returned  home  to  criticize  from  his 
paper  the  government,  and,  pursued  by  spies, 
found  a  hiding  place.  When  his  aged  mother 
would  not  give  up  her  son,  the  police  stripped 
the  woman  to  the  back,  tied  her  to  a  two- 
wheeled  cart  and  flogged  her  up  and  down 
the  village  street,  to  terrorize  the  commu- 
nity. Witness  the  indignities  wrought  upon 
Madame  Bereshkovsky,  because  she  taught 
the  peasants  on  her  own  estate  how  to  read, 
and  founded  for  them  schools  for  the  better- 
ment of  the  health  and  happiness  of  children 
and  women.  Witness  the  ten  thousand  ex- 
amples of  cruelty  found  in  the  history  of  the 
Siberian  convicts.  Witness  the  persecutions 
of  the  Mennonites,  a  pure  and  spotless  people, 
if  our  earth  has  ever  known  such,  but  hounded 
out  of  the  land  because  they  will  not  con- 
form to  the  Greek  Church.  Witness  the  ex- 
communication of  Tolstoi,  the  one  outstand- 


The  New  Russia 

ing  Russian  of  genius  and  heroism  in  his 
era. 

"Witness  the  tragedy  of  the  patrician 
Peshkoff.  Taking  his  family  to  London  for 
a  winter's  season,  this  Russian  aristocrat 
passed  under  the  influence  of  a  Christian 
minister.  Listening  to  a  sermon  on  the  love 
of  God  to  sinful  men,  he  began  to  feel,  and 
then  to  weep.  Going  to  London  to  scoff,  he 
remained  to  pray.  His  conversion  was  dra- 
matic. Going  to  the  Ambassador's  house  he 
told  his  story.  One  of  the  richest  men  of 
Russia,  everywhere  men  listened  to  his 
words.  Returning  to  St.  Petersburg  he 
opened  his  city  house,  and  filling  his  draw- 
ing-rooms with  rich  men  and  servants  he  be- 
sought them  to  accept  Christ  and  lead  a 
Christian  life.  Passing  under  suspicion,  he 
was  arrested,  expelled  from  the  Greek 
Church,  peeled  of  his  goods,  sent  to  Siberia 
as  an  exile.  Escaping  from  the  convict 
mines,  Peshkoff  finally  reached  Paris,  where 
he  died  in  extreme  poverty. 

Such  things  take  us  back  to  the  days  when 
Tyndale  was  burned  for  distributing  the 
Bible  in  England,  and  when  the  Waldenses 
were  persecuted  in  Italy  for  their  new  vital 
faith.  But  at  last  the  fire  is  kindled.  The 
132 


Her  Ambition  for  a  Seaport 

Y.  M.  C.  A.  building  in  St.  Petersburg  has 
become  a  centre  of  light  and  learning.  The 
university  students  have  the  fire  that  burns 
and  will  not  be  extinguished.  Successive 
legislative  Dumas,  representing  the  people, 
although  checked,  dissolved,  reconstituted, 
working  under  discouragements,  have  begun 
the  slow  march  towards  a  larger  liberty. 
Nothing  can  stay  this  movement.  God  is 
abroad  in  Russia.  The  new  era  is  on,  and 
there  is  no  enemy  that  can  stay  the  chariots 
divine. 

True  it  is  that,  ten  years  ago,  great  Russia 
was  defeated  in  war  by  little  Japan.  The 
reasons  for  that  were  in  the  distance  at  which 
Russia  worked,  the  impossibility  of  trans, 
porting  armies,  food,  military  equipment 
three  thousand  miles  with  promptitude,  the 
inefficiency  of  her  old  guns  and  cartridges, 
the  graft  of  her  commissary  department,  the 
inefficiency  of  her  ignorant  peasant  soldiers, 
and  finally  the  feeling  of  the  men  that  they 
had  nothing  to  fight  for  since,  if  successful, 
the  aristocrats  obtained  the  reward ;  and  if 
defeated  they  themselves  had  nothing  to 
lose  because  they  had  nothing. 

Yet  let  no  man  mistake  that  there  is  a  new 
Russia.  This  great  people  cannot  be  talked 
133 


The  New  Russia 

down.  Bead  these  books  fresh  from  the 
printing-press,  telling  of  the  reorganization 
of  the  Russian  army  within  the  last  three 
years.  Remember  that  for  every  dollar 
Germany  has  been  spending  on  her  army 
Russia  has  been  spending  three  dollars.  Not 
of  a  tall  physique,  the  Russian  is  wiry,  com- 
pact, sturdy.  Like  the  Chinaman,  also,  he 
has  one  advantage — he  is  a  vegetarian  for 
centuries ;  three  pounds  of  black  bread  and 
a  little  soup  makes  his  meal  upon  the  march. 
Inured  to  cold  for  centuries,  he  is  not  dis- 
turbed by  snow  or  frosty  nights.  It  was 
this  that  accounted  for  Napoleon's  defeat  in 
Russia.  For  several  days  the  French  Em- 
peror lived  in  the  Kremlin  in  Moscow,  and 
from  its  banqueting  hall  sent  his  orders  out 
into  the  world.  One  morning  he  awoke  to 
find  that  his  men's  feet  were  freezing,  and 
their  hands  too  cold  to  pull  a  trigger.  Then 
these  Russians,  with  their  long  coats,  closed 
in  upon  Napoleon,  and  when  a  few  weeks 
had  passed  the  great  conqueror,  with  twenty 
servants,  having  fled  by  night  and  day, 
crossed  the  frontier  into  Germany,  while  in 
a  single  Russian  valley  were  buried  one  hun- 
dred thousand  Frenchmen. 
Moreover,  the  Russian  resources  in  men 
134 


Her  Ambition  for  a  Seaport 

are  colossal,  in  food  boundless,  in  warlike 
munitions  vast ;  and,  while  her  pecuniary  re- 
serves are  not  equal  to  some  of  the  Western 
European  nations,  her  wealthy  allies  will 
supply  all  that  she  needs.  She  has  not  the 
wonderful  strategic  railroad  systems  of  the 
Germans,  which  will  at  times  put  her  at  dis- 
advantage, but  her  numbers  will  enable  her 
to  line  the  frontiers.  Her  Polish  territory 
thrusts  out  westwardly  between  East  Prussia 
on  the  north  and  Austrian  Galicia  on  the 
south,  and  that  eastern  war-territory  must 
mean  a  terrific  struggle  for  Germany  while 
at  the  same  time  she  is  at  grips  with  France, 
Belgium  and  Great  Britain  in  the  West. 

Now  winter  is  at  hand  and  the  Russian  is 
at  his  best.  In  his  hands  he  carries  a  new 
Crag-Jurgensen  rifle.  In  his  heart  is  kindled 
a  great  hope  that  he  is  to  have  the  Bos- 
phorus  and  a  chance  at  commerce.  Most  in- 
fluential of  all  is  the  fact  that  the  Russian 
believes  this  his  chance  to  retrieve  the  repu- 
tation he  lost  at  Port  Arthur  and  Mukden. 

Men  are  never  defeated  when  they  do  not 
know  that  they  are  defeated.  Every  day 
now  intensities  the  conflict.  Grown  desper- 
ate, all  the  armies  are  fighting  like  demons. 
Dispatches  from  London  and  Berlin  alike 
'35 


The  New  Russia 

agree  that  on  the  entire  battle  line  tens  of 
thousands  are  being  killed  each  day.  It  is  as 
if  there  were  seven  Gettysburgs  being  fought 
every  week.  What  means  this  desperation  ? 

"We  understand,  when  a  king  or  a  kaiser, 
angry  because  his  generals  have  been  de- 
feated, orders  three  officers  to  be  shot,  that 
that  is  the  flash  of  the  thunderbolt.  But  there 
is  something  more  terrible  than  the  thunder- 
bolt ;  it  is  the  ground-swell  of  the  earthquake. 
Unmoved,  men  watch  the  lightning,  but 
when  the  earth  heaves,  the  cheek  goes  white. 
Kaisers  and  kings  are  in  the  way  to  discover 
that  the  result  of  this  is  to  be  the  uprising  of 
the  poor.  Begun  by  rulers  and  diplomats, 
this  war  is  arousing  vast  populations,  who 
will  learn  their  power.  Weary  of  centuries 
of  militarism,  cruel  taxation  and  absolutism, 
they  will  find  the  determination  to  be  free. 

Let  monarchs  beware  the  ground-swell  of 
democracy ! 

'  EESOUECES  OF  EUSSIA,  1913 l 

Area  in  square  miles  (European),      1,862,524. 

(  Whole  Empire},       8, 764, 586. 

Population  (European),   122,550,700. 

(Whole  Empire),    171,059,700. 

'Estimates  from  the  War  Gazetteer,  N.  Y.  Evening 
Post  Company,  Copyright. 

136 


Her  Ambition  for  a  Seaport 

Wealth,  $40,000,000,000. 
National  debt,  $4,422,858,884. 
Auuual  revenue,  $1,779,130,749. 
Army  budget  (1913-1914),  $388,900,000. 
Navy  budget  (1913-1914),  $121,247,270. 
Army  : 

Standing  (European},  949,000) 

(Asiatic),  124,000  [-5,400,000. 

Beserves,  4,327,000 } 


137 


VI 

The  Unspeakable  Turk: 
An  Alien  in  Europe 


The  Turk  came  in  as  an  alien  and  barbarian, 
encamped  on  the  soil  of  Europe.  At  the  end 
of  five  hundred  years  he  remains  an  alien  and 
barbarian  encamped  on  soil  which  he  has  no  more 
made  his  own  than  it  was  when  he  first  took 
Gallipolis  [in  Thrace,  1356;  Constantinople,  in 
1453].  His  rule  during  all  that  time  has  been 
the  rule  of  strangers  over  enslaved  nations  in  their 
own  land.  It  has  been  the  rule  of  cruelty, 
faithlessness  and  brutal  lust ;  it  has  not  been  gov- 
ernment, but  organized  brigandage.  His  rule 
cannot  be  reformed.  While  all  other  nations 
get  better  and  better,  the  Turk  gets  worse  and 
worse.  .  .  . 

For  an  evil  that  cannot  be  reformed,  there  is 
"one  remedy  only — to  get  rid  of  it.     Justice,  rea- 
son, humanity  demand  that  the  rule  of  the  Turk 
in  Europe  should  be  got  rid  of. 

EDWARD  A.  FREEMAN. 
"  The  Turks  in  Europe." 


VI 

THE  UNSPEAKABLE  TURK: 
AN  ALIEN  IN  EUROPE 

BUT  yesterday  the  cable  flashed  the  news 
under  the  sea  that  Turkey  had  entered 
the  European  conflict,  and  ordered  a  Holy 
War. 

The  history  of  the  Moslem  faith  during 
the  years  of  religious  conflict  is  a  record  of 
massacre,  attended  by  such  ferocity  as  to 
send  the  blood  from  the  cheeks  of  the  out- 
side peoples.  There  are  180,000,000  Mo- 
hammedans in  the  world.  Of  this  number 
but  20,000,000  are  Turks ;  and  of  these  Turks 
who  hold  the  Moslem  faith,  only  2,500,000 
live  in  Europe.  Unfortunately,  Constanti- 
nople is  not  only  the  capital  of  Turkey,  but 
the  seat  of  the  Caliphate,  the  dominion  over 
all  Mohammedans,  long  held  and  still  claimed 
by  the  Sultans.  The  world  holds  no  city  sur- 
passing Constantinople  in  beauty  of  situation 
or  in  strategic  importance,  commanding  as  it 
does  the  narrow  waters  between  Southern 
Europe  and  Asia.  The  time  was  when  it 
141 


The  Unspeakable  Turk 

looked  as  if  the  great  majority  of  Mohammed- 
ans would  refuse  to  be  still  governed  by  a 
little  group  of  European  Turks,  and  in  the 
critical  year  1878  many  statesmen  believed 
that  if  the  Turk  lost  Constantinople  the  seat 
of  the  Caliphate  would  be  taken  to  Cairo  or 
Mecca,  and  that  the  Mohammedans  living 
round  about  the  Mosque  of  St.  Sophia  would 
be  thrown  from  their  place  of  power  in 
Europe. 

In  the  physical  system  the  body  is  large, 
and  the  spinal  cord  small,  but  that  tiny  nerve 
thread  from  the  brain  controls  the  bulk  of 
Samson  and  Goliath.  For  centuries  Con- 
stantinople has  been  the  brain  and  nerve 
controlling  the  Mohammedan  populations. 
But,  little  by  little,  the  steamship,  the  rail- 
way, the  printing-press  and  commerce  have 
created  an  atmosphere  around  the  Moslems 
hitherto  impervious  to  approach  through  re- 
ligious teaching,  and  now  has  come  a  time 
when  it  seems  unlikely  that  a  handful  of 
Turks  can  send  into  a  Holy  War  the  eighty 
millions  of  their  co-religionists  in  India  and 
the  hundred  millions  in  Africa,  Asia  Minor, 
Arabia  and  Persia. 

Yet,  even  if  the  announcement  that  Tur- 
key has  at  last  cast  in  her  lot  with  Germany 
142 


An  Alien  in  Europe 

and  Austria  simply  means  the  Turkish  in- 
crease in  fighting  force,  the  news  brings  with 
it  the  fear  of  a  new  Balkan  insurrection  and 
a  possible  world  conflagration.  Already  there 
are  eleven  nations  at  war,  and  ours  is  the 
only  one  of  the  first  rank  in  population  and 
wealth  that  stands  aloof.  Behold  how  great 
a  matter  a  little  fire  kindleth  ! 

When  that  woman,  on  an  October  night  in 
Chicago,  upset  her  lamp,  no  one  thought  that 
the  burning  of  her  little  frame  stable  meant 
anything  to  foreign  nations.  But,  unfortu- 
nately, Chicago  was  built  of  wooden  houses  ; 
for  two  months  there  had  been  a  drought 
and  not  a  drop  of  rain  ;  the  whole  city  was 
dry  as  tinder  ;  the  wind  was  from  the  south- 
west ;  within  one  hour  the  block  was  aflame ; 
within  two  hours  six  blocks  were  blazing ;  at 
midnight  the  flames  leaped  a  river  three 
hundred  feet  in  width ;  within  twenty-four 
hours  the  West  Side  was  a  mass  of  flames, 
and  then  there  came  a  moment  when  the 
wind  swept  the  flames  into  the  North  Side. 
Could  you  have  been  lifted  up  into  the  air 
above  and  looked  down  upon  the  spectacle, 
you  would  have  gazed  upon  a  furnace  of 
red-hot  coals  a  mile  and  a  half  square,  with 
the  blue  and  crimson  and  white  tongues 
143 


The  Unspeakable  Turk 

of  fire  brooding  upon  the  coals.  When  the 
third  day  came,  there  was  panic  in  the  streets 
of  foreign  cities,  where  great  insurance  com- 
panies had  their  head  offices,  so  far  did  that 
distant  fire  send  its  heat.  In  hours  of  de- 
pression the  lover  of  his  fellow  men  must 
sometimes  confess  to  an  awful  terror  lest  the 
whole  world  become  involved  in  this  present 
conflict  that  will  leave  Europe  in  a  desola- 
tion as  terrible  as  that  which  followed  the 
Thirty  Years'  War. 

Jealous  hate  is  a  fire.  Passion  is  the  wind 
that  fans  the  flame.  Civilization  holds  the 
material  for  a  conflagration  that  can  make 
the  whole  earth  desolate.  The  time  has 
come  when  we  can  no  longer  put  any  confi- 
dence in  statesman  or  diplomat.  We  have 
only  one  hope  left  for  society — the  entrance 
of  an  Infinite  God  into  the  battle-field. 

More  than  four  hundred  and  fifty  years 
have  now  passed  since  the  "  Unspeakable 
Turk  "  conquered  Constantinople  and  entered 
Europe  as  an  alien.  More  than  one  thousand 
years  have  come  and  gone  since  the  Mo- 
hammedans swept  like  a  flame  northward 
and  westward  from  Arabia.  With  Thomas 
Carlyle  let  us  confess  the  genius  of  Mo- 
hammed, and  joyfully  acknowledge  his  sin- 
144 


An  Alien  in  Europe 

cerity  and  earnestness  during  the  first  twenty 
years  of  his  career.  But  history  compels  us 
to  add  that,  embittered  by  his  failure  to 
spread  his  faith  by  religious  appeal,  at  last 
he  decided  to  advance  his  cause  by  the 
sword  and  by  promising  his  followers  the 
grossest  physical  rewards  in  return  for  every 
disciple  they  coerced  out  of  their  own  faith 
into  that  of  the  Moslem. 

The  spectacle  of  a  little  lamp  spreading 
until  it  consumed  a  great  city  but  faintly 
illustrates  the  spread  of  Mohammed's  faith 
from  six  followers  to  a  day  when  outlaws, 
adventurers  and  soldiers  of  fortune  assembled 
to  travel  like  a  column  of  fire  across  the 
world,  forcing  men  to  say  with  their  lips  at 
least,  "There  is  but  one  God,  and  Mo- 
hammed is  His  prophet."  In  those  wars 
of  propagation,  millions  of  persons  who  re- 
fused to  forswear  their  convictions  were 
massacred,  but  at  last,  the  conflagration  hav- 
ing blackened  all  Asia  Minor,  North  Africa, 
Spain,  and  the  Byzantine  Empire  as  far 
west  as  Vienna,  it  was  stopped  in  the  central 
part  of  France  by  Charles  Martel,  and  before 
Vienna  by  John  Sobieski. 

The  history  of  Mohammedanism  throws 
a  flood  of  light  on  the  present  situation. 


The  Unspeakable  Turk 

Mohammed  was  born  about  the  year  570  in 
Mecca,  and  was  reared  in  the  home  of  an 
Arabian  aristocrat.  Early  left  an  orphan, 
he  was  adopted  by  a  wealthy  uncle,  and 
given  an  opportunity  to  travel  with  his 
caravans  all  through  that  ancient  world. 
He  married  the  richest  widow  of  the  time, 
and  his  wife  put  her  fortune  at  his  disposal, 
just  as  Disraeli's  wife  forwarded  the  ambi- 
tions of  the  Hebrew  statesman.  After 
fifteen  years  of  contemplation  in  the  desert, 
like  Moses,  Mohammed  returned  to  the  city. 
He  brought  to  men  his  belief  in  one  God, 
personal,  and  infinite.  That  he  found  in  the 
old  Hebrew  Scriptures  of  Moses  and  Isaiah 
his  theory  of  theism  no  scholar  doubts.  In 
an  era  when  the  Epicurean  said,  "  There  is 
no  God,"  when  irreligion  was  eating  out  the 
heart  of  decadent  Greece  and  Rome,  while 
idolatry  ruled  Arabia,  Mohammed  in  soli- 
tary meditation  had  visions  of  the  higher 
truth,  and  returned  to  the  world  to  revive 
men's  faith  of  the  reality  and  omnipresence 
of  God. 

For  three  years  he  stood  upon  the  corners 

of  the  streets,  proclaiming  his  faith,  and  won 

thirteen  disciples.     When  his  fortune  began 

to  suffer,  his  relatives  urged  silence,  but  the 

146 


An  Alien  in  Europe 

hero  answered:  "If  the  sun  stood  on  my 
right  hand  and  the  moon  on  my  left,  order- 
ing me  to  hold  my  peace,  I  would  still  de- 
clare there  is  but  one  God."  Finally  the 
people  began  to  be  irritated,  and  one  day 
the  mob  covered  him  with  dust  and  ashes, 
and  he  barely  escaped  from  the  riot  with  his 
life.  Then,  on  the  20th  of  June,  622,  he  fled 
to  Medina.  That  date,  known  as  the  Hejira 
or  Flight,  marks  the  Era  of  Mohammedan- 
ism, as  the  birth  of  Jesus  denotes  the  Chris- 
tian Era.  In  Medina  he  wrote  the  Koran, 
fulfilling  a  life  of  asceticism  and  retirement. 
At  last  his  health  gave  way  and  he  became 
the  victim  of  ecstasies  and  visions,  and  in  an 
irritable  spirit  turned  bitter. 

Thus,  then,  he  decided  to  adapt  his  religion 
to  the  people  about  him.  He  was  ambitious 
for  success,  and  he  decided  to  win  it  at 
whatsoever  cost.  Having  failed  by  his  ap- 
peal to  conscience,  he  now  determined  to 
win  men  by  the  use  of  the  sword  and  a 
religion  founded  on  sensuality. 

He  went  over  to  the  vice  of  the  East, 
polygamy,  and  painted  Heaven  as  a  land 
flowing  with  wine  and  honey,  all  of  whose 
houses  were  palaces,  where  all  wore  gar- 
ments of  gold  thread,  and  where  the  warrior 


The  Unspeakable  Turk 

remained  young  and  was  endowed  with 
passions  that  could  never  be  exhausted,  and 
with  an  infinity  of  black-eyed  wives.  A 
regiment  of  soldiers  came  one  day  and 
offered  their  services.  He  set  forth  like  a 
conquering  hero  and  made  himself  terrible 
to  all  who  would  not  acknowledge  that  there 
was  but  one  God,  and  Mohammed  was  His 
prophet.  His  military  forces  grew  with  fierce 
rapidity.  Within  eleven  years  he  had  con- 
quered the  East.  He  died  in  632,  but  his 
successors — for  some  time  descendants  from 
his  family — vigorously  carried  on  the  prop- 
aganda. Their  armies  marched  into  Syria 
and  gave  the  inhabitants  their  choice  of  the 
Moslem  faith  or  the  grave.  Later  came  the 
victory  over  Egypt,  and  the  burning  of  the 
largest  library  in  the  world,  in  Alexandria. 
Moving  westward  around  the  Mediterranean, 
they  soon  conquered  more  than  thirty  thou- 
sand cities,  towns  and  castles.  At  last,  in 
1453,  they  won  also  a  permanent  hold  in 
Eastern  Europe  through  the  conquest  of 
Constantinople. 

That  wonderful  hill  looking  down  upon 

the  Bosphorus,  and  across  to  Asia  on  the 

south  and  to  Europe  on  the  north,  has  been 

likened  unto  a  warrior's  steed,  with  Mo- 

148 


An  Alien  in  Europe 

hammed  in  the  saddle,  and  controlling  the 
destinies  of  three  continents,  laved  by  the 
waters  of  the  sea  at  the  rider's  feet. 

But  what  if  the  Turk  should  be  unseated 
from  his  saddle  ?  What  if  that  alien  to  our 
civilization  is  thrust  back  into  the  desert? 
So  dark  and  depressing  are  the  Mohammedan 
lands  that  a  traveller  who  went  by  horse- 
back across  the  Turkey  of  thirty  years  ago 
says  that  when  he  reached  the  edge  of 
Austria  he  saw  a  gibbet  with  a  dead  body 
held  by  a  rope  and  swinging  to  the  wind. 
"The  sight  of  that  scaffold,"  says  the 
traveller,  "  was  depressing,  but  after  Turkey, 
I  felt  that  at  last  I  was  in  a  civilized  land." 

It  stirs  the  wonder  of  the  Twentieth  Cen- 
tury man  that  the  Moslem  dominates  the  old 
centres  where  civilization,  with  the  arts  and 
sciences  and  laws,  had  their  rise.  For  four 
and  a  half  centuries  Mohammedanism  has 
ruled  the  Near  East,  and  starved  the  soul  al- 
most to  death.  Mention  one  contribution 
that  Turkey  has  made  to  art,  finance,  phi- 
losophy, religion,  or  the  home.  True,  the 
Arabian  conquerors  of  Spain  in  the  Eighth 
Century  brought  Saracenic  science  and  manu- 
facturing skill  to  that  land,  where  they  held  a 
varying  power  until  expelled  in  the  Fifteenth 
149 


The  Unspeakable  Turk 

Century.  But  in  the  Orient,  Islamism  has 
destroyed  science  and  fine  working.  It  is  an 
Eastern  proverb  that  the  hoof  of  the  bullock 
and  the  swine  leave  barrenness,  and  certainly 
wherever  the  Turkish  hoof  has  been  set 
down,  beauty  and  prosperity  have  been 
trampled  into  nothingness.  But  remember 
that  when  you  sail  from  Athens  towards 
Constantinople,  you  see  the  crescent  flying 
over  the  little  town  where  Homer  made  his 
Iliad,  over  the  island  where  "  Sappho  loved 
and  sung,"  that  Mohammed  controls  that 
storied  route  along  which  passed  Xenophon 
and  his  Ten  Thousand.  Remember  that 
Ephesus  and  all  the  Seven  Cities  where  Paul 
founded  his  churches  have  been  lost  to  the 
Christian  faith  ;  that  the  Mohammedan  con- 
trols Bethlehem,  the  birthplace  of  Jesus, 
Jerusalem,  the  centre  of  His  ministry,  the 
Jordan,  once  pressed  by  the  feet  of  Joshua 
and  John  the  Baptist.  The  Moslem  rules 
Damascus,  on  the  road  to  which  Paul  beheld 
the  heavenly  vision.  Egypt  is  the  mother  of 
the  arts  and  sciences,  but  in  Cairo  there  is 
a  Mohammedan  University  with  thousands 
of  pupils,  who  sit  in  semicircles  on  the 
marble  pavements — learning  to  repeat  the 
Koran. 

150 


An  Alien  in  Europe 

Islam — originally  meaning  Submission  to 
the  will  of  God — now  stands  for  two  crimes 
—polygamy  and  slavery.  Polygamy  is  a 
cancer  that  eats  out  the  very  heart  of 
society ;  slavery  is  a  foul  ulcer  that  the 
surgeons  of  this  Republic  cut  out  with  sharp 
knives.  Islam  journeys  forward,  carrying 
these  two  fatal  diseases  in  itself.  But  take 
away  polygamy  and  slavery,  and  you  have 
taken  the  heart  out  of  the  Koran,  and  with- 
out the  Koran,  there  is  no  Islam  ism. 

Asia  Minor  and  Palestine  are  a  bridge 
connecting  Europe  and  Asia,  but  that  bridge 
is  in  the  hand  of  the  Turk ;  and  the  Turk 
hath  now  formed  his  alliance  with  Austria 
and  Germany ;  the  plan  being  that  the 
bridge  shall  stretch  from  the  Kiel  Canal  to 
the  Persian  Gulf  and  be  protected  by  rows 
of  bayonets  as  bulwarks  for  the  bridge.  To 
defend  this  structure  a  Holy  War  has  been 
declared.  But  there  are  the  best  of  reasons 
for  believing  that  the  Mohammedans  under 
the  varied  rule  of  .Russia,  England  and 
France,  will  pay  no  heed  to  the  religious 
summons  from  the  long-discredited  Sultan, 
but  will  stand  loyal,  and  that  when  the  conflict 
is  over  this  impossible  Turk  will  have  been 
bundled  bag  and  baggage  out  of  Europe. 


The  Unspeakable  Turk 

For  the  symbol  of  the  Moslem  is  a  waning 
crescent : — 

The  moon  of  Mahomet 
Arose,  and  it  shall  set ; 
While,  blazoned  as  on  heaven's  im- 
mortal noon, 
The  Cross  leads  generations  on. 

Now,  every  man  who  loves  Greece,  as  the 
land  from  whence  we  have  our  ideas  of  the 
drama,  of  the  poem,  of  eloquence  and  phi- 
losophy, will  be  conscious  of  the  stirring  of  a 
great  hope  from  this  news  that  Turkey  has 
started  to  commit  suicide.  It  is  nearly 
eighty  years  since  Daniel  Webster  stood  up 
in  the  United  States  Senate  and  made  his 
plea  for  Greece.  Our  greatest  statesman 
was  fully  conscious  of  his  indebtedness  to 
Athens,  and  he  was  not  the  man  to  owe  an 
obligation  and  not  to  repay  it.  In  the  hour 
when  Greece  was  struggling  to  escape  from 
the  Turk  and  his  bloody  hand,  the  Grecian 
patriots  appealed  to  this  Republic.  In  his 
reply  to  the  appeal,  Daniel  Webster  re- 
minded our  people  of  what  France  as  a  lover 
of  liberty  had  done  for  us  during  our  dark 
days.  What  marvellous  genius  in  that  plea 
of  Webster's !  What  an  argument  for  the 
152 


An  Alien  in  Europe 

solidarity  of  the  race  !  How  near  he  made 
Greece  seem  to  us !  With  what  little  cost  of 
assistance  might  Greece  have  been  free ! 
Lord  Byron  was  under  a  similar  sense  of 
obligation : — 

The  isles  of  Greece  !    The  isles  of  Greece  ! 
Where  burning  Sappho  loved  and  sung  ; 
Where  grew  the  arts  of  war  and  peace, 
Where  Delos  rose,  and  Phoebus  sprung. 
Eternal  sunshine  gilds  them  yet, 
But  all  except  their  sun  is  set. 

At  last  Greece  escaped  from  the  Turkish 
yoke,  and  consider  what  her  condition  was 
in  the  hour  when  the  stained  hand  was  lifted. 
Then,  not  a  book  could  be  bought  in  Athens ; 
now,  after  fifty  years,  the  whole  nation  is  in 
school.  Then,  Athens  was  a  town  of  hovels ; 
now,  it  is  a  royal  city  of  nearly  100,000  peo- 
ple. Under  liberty,  she  has  founded  fifteen 
new  cities,  restored  forty  ruined  towns,  built 
a  fleet  of  nearly  ten  thousand  vessels,  founded 
fifty  printing  houses,  thirty  newspapers,  a 
university,  with  nearly  one  hundred  profess- 
ors and  two  thousand  students. 

Then  a  slave  of  oppression,  now  Greece 
stands  in  the  front  rank  of  self-educated 
J53 


The  Unspeakable  Turk 

nations.  To-day,  the  Greeks,  in  southeast- 
ern Europe,  outnumber  the  Turks  ten  to  one. 
Estimating  their  wealth,  they  are  as  fifty  to 
one,  and  on  this  day,  when  Turkey  has  drawn 
the  sword  against  the  Allies,  a  sword  upon 
which  Turkey  herself  shall  fall,  it  is  for  all 
lovers  of  liberty  to  realize  that  the  day  for 
which  Daniel  Webster  pleaded  and  Byron 
sang  has  come — the  day  of  release  from 
Turkey's  bondage,  the  day  of  liberty  for  all 
the  Greek  people  in  the  southeast, — for  most 
of  the  "  Isles  of  Greece  "  in  the  ^Egean  are 
still  held  by  the  Turk. 

But  the  imminence  of  Turkey's  fall  and 
the  loss  of  Constantinople  bring  into  recogni- 
tion a  new  hope  for  Asia  Minor.  For  more 
than  a  generation  Turkey  has  stood  against 
the  railroad  that  would  join  Constantinople 
to  the  Persian  Gulf.  The  Sultan  feared  to 
let  in  the  sunshine  of  commerce.  But  Kus- 
sia  and  England  now  have  common  interests. 
Kussia  has  the  northern  half  of  Persia,  and 
England  controls  the  southern  part.  Al- 
ready the  alliance  has  been  entered  into  look- 
ing to  the  construction  of  a  railroad  on  the 
east  bank  of  the  Euphrates  Kiver.  This 
road,  beginning  at  Constantinople,  would 
shorten  the  European  path  to  India.  This 
154 


An  Alien  in  Europe 

road  would  simplify  the  exchange  of  the 
markets  of  Asia  and  Europe.  This  road, 
joined  to  the  railway  of  North  India,  would 
bring  London  within  six  days  of  Calcutta. 
Germany  already  largely  controls  a  railway 
beginning  near  Ephesus  that  would  have  been 
shortly  completed  through  to  Bagdad,  four 
hundred  miles  to  the  Persian  Gulf. 

A  third  great  enterprise  has  been  proposed, 
looking  to  a  canal  that  will  connect  the 
Mediterranean  and  the  Red  Sea  by  way  of 
the  Valley  of  the  Jordan.  Sometimes,  as  in 
the  case  of  the  Panama  Canal,  the  longest 
way  around  is  the  shortest  way  across.  It  is 
but  twenty-five  miles  across  the  Plain  of 
Esdraelon  from  the  Mediterranean  to  the 
Jordan.  Through  this  canal  the  waters 
would  flow  down  the  slope  through  and  from 
the  Dead  Sea  into  the  Red  Sea.  A  lake 
hundreds  of  feet  deep  would  be  created,  a 
lake  whose  northern  shore  would  extend  to 
the  Lake  of  Galilee,  a  lake  whose  western 
shore  would  come  within  ten  miles  of  Jeru- 
salem, a  lake  whose  waters  would  flow  by  a 
natural  channel  from  the  Dead  Sea  into  the 
Red  Sea.  The  strategic  importance  to  Eng- 
land of  two  sea  routes  in  times  of  war  is  self- 
evident.  The  influence  of  such  an  enterprise 
155 


The  Unspeakable  Turk 

upon  the  agricultural  development  of  these 
lands  would  be  incalculable. 

But  yesterday  such  a  plan  was  impossible, 
because  of  Turkey's  opposition.  Who  knows 
whether  there  will  be  any  Turkey  to-morrow  ? 
When  Turkey  goes  there  will  be  a  new  agri- 
culture in  these  sacred  lands,  new  engineer- 
ing, new  railways,  new  shipping,  new  cities 
and  new  civilization.  Egypt  and  Persia, 
with  the  Suez  Canal,  are  the  key  to  the 
whole  British  Empire.  Napoleon  used  to 
say  that  whoever  governs  Egypt  will  govern 
both  Europe  and  Asia.  He  wrote  to  the 
French  Directory :  "  By  seizing  and  holding 
Egypt  I  grasp  and  command  the  destinies  of 
the  whole  civilized  world."  When  the  great 
soldier  began  to  realize  the  strength  of  Mo- 
hammedanism, as  an  opportunist  he  straight- 
way went  over  to  the  Mohammedan  faith, 
and  this  alliance  with  the  priests  at  Cairo 
was  to  be  the  first  step  in  a  gigantic 
scheme  to  control  the  one  hundred  and  more 
millions  who  then  cherished  the  Moslem 
faith. 

Burke's  famous  cautionary  statement — "  I 

do  not  know  the  method  of  drawing  up  a.n 

indictment  against  a  whole  people  " — should 

perhaps  guard  us  against  too  sweeping  a  con- 

156 


An  Alien  in  Europe 

demnation  of  the  Turks,  despite  the  tre- 
mendous weight  of  evidence  against  them. 
Accredited  visitors  have  found  their  official 
classes  hospitable,  courteous  and  cultured. 
One  of  the  encyclopaedias  says  that  they  are 
"  handsome,  courageous,  honest  and  dignified, 
but  inclined  to  indolence,  fanaticism  and  ar- 
rogance. Polygamy  is  confined  almost  en- 
tirely to  the  rich  classes."  And  that  may 
all  be  true,  without  invalidating  the  awful 
record  of  cruelty  to  subject  races,  and  gen- 
eral inhumanity  to  man  and  woman,  with 
repression  of  all  popular  attempt  to  improve 
in  civilization. 

Doubtless  there  is  a  new  Turkey,  that  has 
broken  with  the  old  regime.  From  the 
Young  Turks  and  their  new  dreams  spring 
the  hopes  that  men  cherish  for  the  followers 
of  Islam,  although  they  have  shown  much 
reactionary  influence  in  all  directions,  and 
the  weakness  of  divided  counsels  in  this 
great  crisis,  and  have  allowed  their  nation 
to  be  coerced  by  Germany. 

Cyrus  Hamlin,  of  our  American  Board  of 
Commissioners  for  Foreign  Missions,  is  called 
the  father  of  modern  education  in  Turkey. 
More  than  seventy  years  have  passed  since 
he  landed  at  Constantinople.  At  that  time 
157 


The  Unspeakable  Turk 

there  was  not  a  school-book  in  any  of  the 
languages  spoken  in  the  Sultan's  empire. 
At  last  Robert  College  is  founded,  in  the 
year  that  witnessed  the  beginning  of  our 
Civil  War.  This  and  other  American  schools 
and  larger  institutions  have  been  called  the 
American  lighthouses  on  a  dark  coast,  where 
the  hungry  surf  still  roars.  Their  many 
Turkish,  Bulgarian  and  other  Balkan  grad- 
uates have  had  great  influence  in  the  upris- 
ings of  recent  years.  Our  own  Howard  Bliss 
is  still  president  of  the  Beirut  College  in  the 
far  northern  corner  of  Palestine,  and  Dr. 
Gates  of  Robert  College.  Several  thousand 
teachers  have  gone  out  from  these  two  in- 
stitutions to  start  public  schools  in  Turkey. 
American  physicians  have  still  further 
strengthened  the  spirit  of  Christianity  and 
freedom.  And  it  is  only  fair  to  say  that 
the  Turkish  Government,  even  under  the  old 
despot  Abdul  Hamid,  has  always  treated 
the  American  missionaries  and  their  edu- 
cational labours  with  consideration  and  pro- 
tection. After  many  years  of  service  as  a 
physician,  the  late  Dr.  "West  so  completely 
won  the  confidence  of  the  Turks  that  when 
the  news  spread  that  he  was  critically  ill, 
prayers  for  his  recovery  were  offered  in 
158 


An  Alien  in  Europe 

Mohammedan  mosques  and  Armenian 
churches. 

This  is  in  striking  contrast  with  that  ex- 
perience recorded  by  the  captain  of  an 
American  battle-ship.  While  anchored  off 
the  Sultan's  palace,  a  valuable  object  was 
lost  over  the  ship's  side.  When  a  diver  was 
sent  down,  he  jerked  the  rope,  and  when 
brought  to  the  surface,  exclaimed  in  words 
of  terror.  He  said  that  he  found  himself  in 
the  midst  of  sacks,  each  of  which  held  a 
corpse,  tied  to  a  stone,  while  all  about  him 
were  skeletons.  It  is  a  gruesome  tale,  and, 
unfortunately,  there  are  many  reasons  for 
believing  it,  and  none  that  throw  doubt 
upon  the  accuracy  of  this  story. 

Of  course,  Great  Britain's  possibility  of 
damage  from  Turkey  is  the  accessibility  of 
the  Suez  Canal  to  attack, — a  vital  matter, 
which  doubtless  the  British  are  clear-eyed 
enough  to  foresee  and  provide  against.  On 
the  other  hand,  if  England  and  France  should 
make  a  determined  effort  to  force  the  splen- 
did fortifications  holding  the  Dardanelles 
against  approach  to  Constantinople,  and  Rus- 
sia should  join  them  through  the  Black  Sea, 
the  heart  of  Turkish  rule  in  Europe  would 
be  in  dire  peril.  In  any  event,  it  would 
159 


The  Unspeakable  Turk 

seem  that  Turkey  has  little  to  gain  and  risks 
all,  in  her  foolish  yielding  to  the  cajolery  of 
Germany. 

As  to  the  resources  of  Turkey,  it  must  be 
recognized  that  both  the  army  and  the  navy 
are  now  under  the  command  of  German 
officers,  who  doubtless  precipitated  the  open- 
ing attack  by  the  Turkish  fleet  on  Kussian 
port  and  ships  in  the  Black  Sea  and  thus 
made  it  impossible  for  Turkey  to  withdraw 
from  the  conflict  that  they  had  themselves 
brought  on. 


EESOURCES  OF  TURKEY1 
Area  in  square  miles  (European),  11,000. 
(Asiatic),  699,224. 
Population  (European),  1,892,000. 
(Asiatic),  19,382,000. 
Wealth,  not  estimated. 
National  debt,  $675,654,000. 
Annual  revenue,  $134,262,000. 
Army  :  Standing,     230,000  1  ,  Q9S  71K 
Eeserves,  1,698,715  ]  1>was>7J 


Available 
Unorganized 

From  "  The  World  Almanac,"  1915. 


)  „ 
{  4 


1 60 


VII 

Italy  Old  and  New : 
Her  Ambitions 


Beyond  question  the  errors  of  the  Italian  Gov- 
ernment since  the  too  early  death  of  Cavour,  the 
only  Italian  statesman  endowed  with  real  practi- 
cal aptitude,  have  been  many  and  great.  The 
fact  is,  that  Italy  was  made  too  quickly,  the  revo- 
lution was  too  suddenly  successful :  there  had  not 
been  time  enough  to  allow  of  the  training  of  free- 
born  citizens.  .  .  .  [But]  if  we  look  at  what 
Italy  was  little  more  than  fifty  years  ago,  we  have 
reason  to  be  astonished  at  the  striking  advance 
she  has  made  in  so  short  a  time,  and  may  well 
place  high  hopes  upon  a  people  who  have  given 
proof  of  such  exuberant  and  recuperative  vitality. 

HELEN  ZIMMERN. 
"  Italy  of  the  Italians"  1906. 


VII 

ITALY  OLD  AND  NEW : 
HEK  AMBITIONS 

ROME  is  called  the  Eternal  City,  and 
Italy  might  well  be  called  the  abiding 
leader  of  the  States  and  of  civilization.  "  O 
Rome,  my  country !  city  of  the  soul ! "  ex- 
claimed Byron  in  his  famous  apostrophe. 
"  The  orphans  of  the  heart  must  turn  to  thee, 
lone  mother  of  dead  empires.  The  Niobe  of 
nations ! "  No  other  land  has  maintained 
the  leadership  of  the  world  for  so  long  a 
time.  Remember  that  the  Egyptian  Thebes — 
city  of  twelve  gates  on  every  side,  city  of 
art  and  eloquence,  city  of  philosophy  and 
literature,  city  of  wealth,  commerce,  and  the 
most  grandiose  architecture  of  history — main- 
tained its  supremacy  for  but  about  four  hun- 
dred years.  Florence  and  Venice  carried  the 
torch  for  only  two  hundred  years.  London 
and  England  have  been  the  world  leaders 
since  the  defeat  of  Napoleon,  while  Rome  had 
led  the  world  for  1,700  years. 
163 


Italy  Old  and  New 

It  was  Italy  that  first  dreamed  its  dream 
of  uniting  all  the  provinces  and  states  into  a 
world  empire,  where  there  should  be  no  war. 
It  was  in  Italy  that  a  statesman  first  cher- 
ished his  vision  of  a  unity  where  justice 
should  be  administered  through  a  Digest  of 
Universal  Law.  It  was  in  Italy  that  plans 
were  made  for  a  language  that  should  be  a 
world  language,  and  a  commerce  that  should 
be  without  barriers  between  states,  and  there- 
fore a  world  trade.  It  has  been  said  that  the 
Past,  the  Present  and  the  Future  are  three 
moods  of  one  and  the  same  verb — to  Live. 
And  it  would  seem  as  if  Rome  and  Italy 
had  lived  in  the  three  realms  at  one  and  the 
same  time.  Feeling  the  pull  of  the  Eternal 
City  upon  his  heart-strings,  Crawford  ex- 
claimed, "The  years  move  on,  but  Rome 
waits ;  the  cities  fall  but  she  stands ;  the 
old  races  lie  dead,  but  Rome  lives.  At  last, 
as  a  gladiator  of  life,  the  world  pilgrim  bows 
his  head  before  her,  wondering  how  his  own 
fight  shall  end,  while  his  lips  pronounce  the 
submission  of  his  own  mortality  to  her  abid- 
ing endurance :  All  hail,  Eternal  Rome ! 
We  who  are  about  to  die  salute  thee ! " 

Back  of  abiding  institutions  stand  the  great 
men  whom  we  must  call  the  makers  of  states 
164 


Her  Ambitions 

and  the  builders  of  institutions.  Yonder  in 
the  shadows  of  the  past  stands  the  greatest 
Puritan  of  them  all,  the  man  of  oak  and 
rock — Scipio  Africanus.  If  ever  there  lived, 
outside  of  Christianity,  a  twin  brother  of 
Socrates,  the  seer  and  man  of  God,  that 
brother  was  the  sturdy  old  Puritan,  Scipio. 
His  enemies  were  accustomed  to  sneer  at 
this  statesman,  because  in  the  midst  of  an 
important  debate  in  the  senate,  touching  the 
future  of  Rome,  he  was  seen  to  withdraw 
into  his  office,  and  there  to  fall  upon  his 
knees.  The  truths  written  in  the  old  Hebrew 
Scriptures  seem  to  have  been  revealed  by 
God  to  the  heart  of  Scipio.  It  is  true  that 
he  was  a  strong  nationalist ;  that  his  motto 
was,  "  My  country,"  and  that  he  led  the 
movement  against  Carthage.  But  Scipio 
felt  the  same  fear  of  Carthage  that  Joshua 
experienced  towards  the  polytheists,  polyg- 
amists,  and  bestial  folk  in  the  land  of  the 
Philistines.  Never  lived  there  a  man  in 
pagan  times  of  strength  more  rugged,  of 
simplicity  more  sincere,  or  of  loyalty  that 
endured  more  stress  in  its  adherence  to  the 
great  convictions  of  justice  and  duty.  His 
daughter  was  the  mother  of  the  Gracchi,  and 
the  hidings  of  the  power  in  these  two  dis- 
165 


Italy  Old  and  New 

tinguished  statesmen  was  in  their  grand- 
father. The  bust  of  the  old  hero  still  stands 
in  the  gallery  of  the  Vatican — a  lion-like 
head,  a  scar  across  the  forehead,  eyes  deep 
as  caverns,  thin,  firm  lips,  square  but  del- 
icately carved  chin — the  kind  of  man  that 
can  bear  the  world  upon  his  shoulders. 

It  is  said  that  recently  a  cluster  of  grapes 
was  plucked  from  a  vine  in  Florida  and  sent 
across  to  Spain,  and  lo,  men  found  the  very 
vines  from  which  that  root  and  seed  and 
graft  had  been  carried  nearly  four  hundred 
years  before  by  Ponce  de  Leon  to  this  new 
continent.  Not  otherwise,  the  character,  the 
spirit,  the  rugged  virtue,  the  stern  simplicity, 
the  insistence  upon  soul  liberty  and  absolute 
justice  for  others,  journeyed  on  for  centuries, 
propagated  in  Italy,  from  the  original  soul 
stock  of  Scipio  Africanus,  a  builder  of  the 
Eternal  City. 

And  then  came  Julius  Cassar,  the  most 
myriad-minded  man  that  was  ever  produced 
on  the  banks  of  the  Tiber.  He  was  a  soldier 
who  never  suffered  defeat.  He  was  a  states- 
man who  planned  roads.  One  ran  along  the 
northern  shores  of  Africa  two  thousand  miles, 
around  the  eastern  end  of  the  Mediterranean 
to  Syria  and  Asia  Minor,  a  road  that  crossed 
1 66 


Her  Ambitions 

from  the  Bosphorus  to  the  lagoons  of  Venice 
and  from  thence  leaped  like  an  arrow  on  to 
Nice  and  thence  through  Calais  to  York  in 
England.  He  was  an  author,  and  wrote  the 
most  charming,  sunny,  simple,  clear,  strong 
histories  of  his  wars,  now  translated  out  of 
ancient  times  in  American  colleges.  Though 
nearly  twenty  centuries  have  passed,  Julius 
Caesar's  supremacy  among  the  five  or  six 
great  generals  of  all  time  still  stands  un- 
challenged. These  two  men  are  the  makers 
of  old  Rome,  and  though  their  bodies  sleep 
in  peace  their  names  are  among  those  that 
live  forever  and  forevermore.  In  Rome 
dwelt  Yirgil,  one  of  the  five  great  epic  poets  ; 
in  Rome  dwelt  Lucretius,  the  father  of  mod- 
ern Evolution  ;  in  Rome  dwelt  Marcus  Aure- 
lius,  the  ethical  emperor,  and  Epictetus  the 
philosopher-slave;  to  Rome  came  Constan- 
tine,  to  proclaim  Christianity,  and  from 
Rome  went  Augustine,  to  transform  North 
Africa. 

Antiquity  gave  place  to  the  Middle  Ages, 
when  all  civilization  was  controlled  by 
Roman  popes,  while  Italian  art  and  literature 
illumined  the  world.  Dante,  father  of  the 
Renaissance,  was  of  Italy,  as  was  Galileo, 
father  of  modern  science ;  and  Columbus, 
167 


Italy  Old  and  New 

our  great  discoverer.  The  world's  greatest 
architect,  Michael  Angelo,  was  Italian,  as 
was  Raphael,  its  greatest  lyric  painter.  Ar- 
nold of  Rugby,  on  the  morning  after  his 
arrival,  wrote :  "  Again  this  date  of  Rome, 
the  most  solemn  and  interesting  that  my 
hand  can  ever  write."  Hawthorne  found 
his  heart-strings  mysteriously  attached  to  the 
Eternal  City,  and  drawing  him  thither  more 
strongly  than  did  the  spot  where  he  was 
born.  For  the  stones  that  crumbled  under 
his  feet  spoke  to  him,  and  the  dust  under 
his  feet  rose  upon  associations  of  human 
grandeur,  as  if  from  broken  thrones  and  em- 
pires. Later  centuries  have  seen  the  strug- 
gles for  liberty  and  unity  among  their  prov- 
inces, in  which  Italian  statesmen  and  soldiers 
have  finally  won  great  triumphs. 

And  now  emerging  out  of  the  mist  of 
obscurity  there  stands  forth  a  New  Italy, 
pulsating  with  life  and  throbbing  with  power. 
Concerning  the  ruins  of  Ephesus,  Babylon 
and  Carthage,  one  of  our  philosophic  his- 
torians has  said  that  no  great  dead  city  ever 
comes  back,  and  no  nation  has  ever  fallen 
out  of  the  race  to  enter  the  lists  again.  The 
statement  seems  to  have  its  contradiction  in 
the  renaissance  of  Nineteenth  and  Twentieth 
1 68 


Her  Ambitions 

Century  Italy.  During  the  past  thirty  years 
her  population  has  kept  pace  pro  rata  with 
that  of  Germany,  until  she  now  has  37,500,000 
people.  Her  wealth  has  grown  by  leaps  and 
bounds,  until  she  has  become  a  great  power 
in  the  councils  of  the  earth.  She  now  has 
fourteen  universities,  thirty-four  schools  of 
agriculture,  fifteen  great  art  institutions  and 
foundations.  Her  new  science  applied  to 
agriculture  is  making  old  fields,  worn  by 
thirty  centuries  of  farming,  to  rival  in  pro- 
ductivity the  lands  of  the  New  World.  In 
the  number  of  volumes  on  political  economy, 
Italy  leads  Germany,  England  and  the 
United  States.  The  world  owes  to  Italy  one 
of  the  greatest  of  all  the  discoveries  of  the 
ages — wireless  telegraphy.  She  now  owes, 
within  the  last  thirty  days,  to  an  Italian 
priest  and  electrician  the  discovery  of  a  wire- 
less pocket  instrument  of  telegraphy.  Italy's 
Navy  is  the  fourth  fleet  in  Europe.  Her 
whole  land  is  throbbing  with  new  life, 
through  a  new  art,  a  new  Italian  literature, 
a  new  political  economy,  a  new  agriculture, 
a  new  cooperative  movement  in  the  produc- 
tion of  wealth,  a  new  modernism  in  the 
realm  of  theology.  And  now  suddenly  Italy 
has  startled  the  world  by  breaking  away 
169 


Italy  Old  and  New 

from  Germany  and  Austria  and  asserting 
her  independence. 

The  Kaiser  of  the  "mailed  fist"  sent  a 
telegram  to  the  Koyal  Palace  in  Rome,  say- 
ing, "  I  will  never  forget  and  I  will  never 
forgive  you,"  but  instead  of  being  cowed  by 
the  threat  the  Italian  King  answered  that 
the  remembering  henceforth  that  Italy  was 
independent  would  do  the  Kaiser  good,  and 
that  as  to  forgiveness  it  had  neither  been 
asked  nor  desired.  In  that  hour  the  spirit 
of  the  new  Italy  broke  into  voice,  for  there 
is  a  new  world  power  in  existence  that  must 
be  reckoned  with  in  the  councils  of  Europe. 

Now  if  we  are  to  understand  the  upward 
progress  of  the  nations  under  the  guiding 
providence  of  God,  in  these  thrilling  days 
when  history  is  making  so  fast,  we  must 
survey  the  national  movements  during  the 
last  generation. 

In  1871,  when  Bismarck  dissolved  the 
council  held  in  the  palace  of  Versailles, 
where  King  William  of  Prussia  had  been 
crowned  German  Emperor,  he  returned  with 
Yon  Moltke  and  Emperor  William  to  Berlin, 
and  carried  with  him  the  cession  of  Alsace 
and  Lorraine  and  $1,000,000,000  in  gold.  It 
is  said  that  at  that  very  time  an  Italian 
170 


Her  Ambitions 

statesman  warned  Bismarck  that  there  was 
such  a  thing  as  demanding  too  much,  with 
the  certain  result  of  creating  a  reaction  with 
an  organized  antagonism  that  would  wax 
more  and  more  during  the  future.  But  Bis- 
marck, who  often  ranked  with  Napoleon  as 
the  demiurgic  creator  of  modern  Europe,  did 
not  see  ten  years  ahead.  He  scoffed. 

Yet  the  very  result  foretold  by  the  Italian 
fell  out.  Little  by  little  France  on  the  west 
of  Germany,  Russia  on  the  east  and  England 
on  the  Northern  Sea,  began  to  realize  that 
Bismarck  was  an  opportunist,  whose  guiding 
principle  in  diplomacy  was  "  anything  to  en- 
hance Germany's  greatness  and  power."  Be- 
coming alarmed,  France  and  Russia  entered 
into  a  compact,  defensive  and  offensive, 
against  Germany,  a  compact  into  which 
England  later  cast  her  pledge  and  power. 
The  genius  of  the  agreement  was  that  the 
balance  of  power  should  be  maintained  in 
Europe,  that  Germany  should  not  be  allowed 
to  seize  any  other  provinces,  and  that  her 
frontier  should  be  made  permanent.  The 
pressure  was  like  being  caught  between  two 
millstones.  From  that  moment,  it  was 
recognized  by  all  students  of  international 
politics  that  if  Germany  tried  to  break 
171 


Italy  Old  and  New 

through  to  the  sea  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Rhine  or  the  Rhone,  Russia  and  England 
would  interfere ;  that  if  she  tried  to  break 
through  at  the  head  waters  of  the  Adriatic 
or  the  Dardanelles,  all  three  nations  would 
put  a  naked  sword  between  the  Kaiser  and 
the  sea.  When  it  was  too  late,  Bismarck 
discovered  that  he  had  gone  too  far  by  over- 
weening ambition.  Alarmed,  he  overawed 
Austria-Hungary,  coaxed  Italy,  and  formed 
the  Triple  Alliance.  But  in  saving  himself 
and  his  Emperor,  Bismarck  had  destroyed 
Europe.  For  now  the  three  nations— 
France,  Russia  and  England — not  in  formal 
alliance,  but  in  what  was  called  the  Triple 
Entente  or  Understanding,  stood  over  against 
three  other  nations — Germany,  Austria  and 
Italy — as  three  forts  bristling  with  cannon 
stand  over  against  three  fortresses  of  granite 
and  steel. 

In  the  summer  of  1914  Austria  and  Ger- 
many assumed  the  offensive  against  Serbia, 
and  Germany  attacked  Belgium  and  France. 
Italy  promptly  proclaimed  neutrality  on  the 
ground  that  her  support  was  pledged  to  the 
defence  of  Germany  and  Austria,  but  that 
she  was  not  under  the  slightest  obligation  to 
support  them  when  they  were  waging  wars 
172 


Her  Ambitions 

of  offence.     In  that  decision  Italy  carried 
the  conscience  of  the  whole  civilized  world. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  new  Italy 
has  developed  new  interests.  Forty  years 
ago  there  were  many  flags  flying  over  the 
dissevered  and  hostile  States  in  the  Italian 
peninsula.  But  out  of  the  long  series  of 
revolutions  came  Italian  unity,  compacting 
the  separate  governments  that  had  been  dis- 
tributed between  Sardinia,  Venice  and  Sicily, 
with  one  Italian  flag  flying  over  all  the 
land.  There  are  still  provinces — Trentino 
and  Trieste — at  the  head  of  the  Adriatic, 
largely  Italian  in  language,  blood,  literature 
and  history,  which,  despite  the  regained  in- 
dependence of  other  Italian  provinces,  while 
still  essentially  Latin,  remain  under  Austrian 
control.  Italians  call  them  Italia  Irridenta 
—Unredeemed  Italy.  In  the  hamlets  and 
streets  of  their  cities  revolution  is  always 
smouldering.  The  people  want  to  break 
away  from  the  court  of  Vienna  and  return  to 
the  flag  of  Italy.  A  century  ago  Austria's 
rule  extended  to  Genoa,  but  one  by  one  Aus- 
tria lost  her  Italian  provinces,  until  she  was 
finally  driven  out  of  Lombardy  and  the  sev- 
enty islands  on  which  Venice  is  built.  Now 
at  last  it  may  be  that  Italy  has  found  her 
173 


Italy  Old  and  New 

opportunity.  If  when  the  Emperor  dies  the 
dual  monarchy  divides,  and  the  Hungarians 
move  their  capital  to  Budapest,  and  set  up  a 
separate  establishment,  Italy  would  have 
only  the  western  part  of  Austria  to  meet, 
and  her  people  long  to  recover  the  lost 
province  and  cities.  Her  government  down 
to  the  present  has  firmly  held  in  check  the 
popular  desire  to  enter  the  war  on  behalf  of 
the  Allies,  and  may  be  able  to  maintain  neu- 
trality. But  a  new  hope  inspires  her  army, 
that  includes  250,000  drilled  soldiers,  be- 
sides reserves  bringing  it  to  a  million.  In- 
deed, an  American  general  who  has  recently 
returned  after  a  year  in  Italy,  in  reviewing 
his  experiences,  has  likened  the  Italian  sol- 
diers during  the  month  of  October  to  the 
hunter's  hound,  tugging  at  the  leash,  and  no 
man  knows  when  the  restraints  will  give 
way.  It  was  the  appearance  on  the  horizon 
of  a  single  army  corps  that  crushed  Napoleon 
and  saved  Wellington  at  Waterloo,  and  it 
may  well  be  that,  if  Austria  proves  a  broken 
reed,  an  Italian  army  from  the  south,  on  the 
undefended  frontier  of  Germany,  may  sud- 
denly end  what  is  rapidly  becoming  a  world 
conflagration. 

Kecent  events  brought  a  new  element  into 
174 


Her  Ambitions 

the  international  situation.  "When  Turkey, 
under  German  pressure,  declared  war  against 
the  Allies,  the  declaration  in  the  nature  of 
the  case  carried  with  it  the  antagonism  of 
Italy,  for  scarcely  two  years  have  passed 
since  Italy  and  Turkey  were  at  war.  Re- 
call  now  all  those  events  involved  in  Italy's 
seizure  of  Tripoli.  Remember  that  during 
the  contest,  Turkey  fought  bitterly  against 
Victor  Immanuel.  During  that  struggle  the 
Turkish  Sultan  closed  the  straits  of  the  Dar- 
danelles against  Italy  and  her  war-ships,  but 
in  doing  so  shut  out  the  food  transports  of 
the  world.  That  act  cost  Italy  heavily,  but 
involved  all  the  nations  in  serious  losses. 
England,  that  lives  always  within  two  weeks 
of  hunger,  found  it  impossible  to  obtain 
wheat  from  Russia.  Lord  Lansdowne  made 
his  way  to  the  Bosphorus.  He  found  one 
hundred  and  eighty-five  English  ships  tied 
up  by  the  closing  of  the  Dardanelles,  some 
of  them  en  route  from  the  wheat  elevators  of 
the  Black  Sea.  Some  were  stopped  on  ap- 
proaching the  Isles  of  Greece,  and  diverted 
through  the  Suez  Canal  to  pick  up  chance 
cargoes  in  the  Indian  Ocean.  But  most  of 
these  ships  were  shut  up  in  the  Black  Sea, 
where  their  wheat  suffered  through  heat,  and 
175 


Italy  Old  and  New 

spoiled.  Liverpool  merchants  lost  at  the  rate 
of  $100,000  per  day,  while  the  farmers  of 
Koumania  and  the  wheat  merchants  of  Rus- 
sia suffered  in  a  far  greater  degree,  as  did 
the  farmers  and  merchants  of  Turkey. 

Italy,  as  well  as  England,  realized  that  no 
nation  controlling  "  narrow  waters,  which 
form  a  great  trade  avenue  to  the  commerce 
of  the  world,  is  justified  in  entirely  closing 
such  an  avenue  to  facilitate  hostile  opera- 
tions in  which  that  power  might  find  itself 
involved."  The  result  of  the  acute  crisis  was 
a  formulation  of  the  international  agreement, 
that  "  the  life  and  death  interests  of  two 
nations  must  be  sacrificed  to  the  interests  of 
the  trading  community  of  the  world." 

The  bearing  of  all  this  upon  the  America 
of  to-morrow  is  most  significant.  In  a  re- 
cent address  before  a  university,  by  ex-Pres- 
ident Taft — an  address  widely  quoted — that 
statesman  referred  to  the  Panama  Canal  as 
"  an  extension  of  the  coast  line  of  the  United 
States,"  and  plans  were  formulated  by  the 
President,  and  in  part  executed  by  our  Gov- 
ernment, to  fortify  the  Panama  Canal.  To 
protect  the  canal  against  a  declared  enemy 
of  the  United  States  would  be  fully  justified, 
but  to  close  it  against  all  nations  in  our  own 
176 


Her  Ambitions 

military  interest  would  be  unendurable  by 
neutral  powers.  The  day  is  gone  forever 
when  even  the  life  and  death  interests  of  a 
belligerent  power  controlling  narrow  waters 
which  form  a  trade  avenue  for  the  com- 
merce of  the  world  can  be  used  for  the 
saving  of  the  life  of  that  nation  to  the  loss 
of  the  life  of  the  other  nations  of  the  world. 
The  problem,  which  began  in  an  acute  dis- 
tress incident  to  Turkey's  closing  of  the 
Dardanelles  against  Italy,  has  widened  in 
its  application  until  it  will  involve  ultimately 
the  recognition  that  the  Panama  Canal — 
the  fortification  of  which  has  not  been  pro- 
tested against  by  any  foreign  power — is  an 
avenue  that  belongs  to  the  trading  com- 
munity of  the  planet.  So  wide-stretching 
are  the  far-off  results  of  Italy's  relations  to 
Turkey  in  this  international  situation. 

To  all  other  motives  influencing  Italy's 
neutral  position  must  now  be  added  the 
motive  of  fear,  partly  military  and  partly 
industrial.  The  leaders  of  German  thought 
have  now  openly  declared  their  position.  No 
words  can  be  more  emphatic  or  startling. 
There  has  been  a  clear,  straightforward,  and 
emphatic  declaration  by  one  of  the  leading 
German  generals,  Von  Disfurth,  not  to  men- 
177 


Italy  Old  and  New 

tion  the  other  two  voices,  that  Germany  not 
only  confesses  that  she  has  gone  over  to  the 
theory  that  might  makes  right,  and  that 
the  decisions  of  war  are  the  decisions  of 
right,  but  that  she  is  proud  of  this  allegiance 
to  might.  "  Frankly,  we  are  and  must  be 
barbarians,  if  by  this  is  meant  those  that 
wage  war  relentlessly  to  the  uttermost  de- 
gree." As  to  Belgium  and  Louvain,  he  says, 
"  there  is  nothing  for  us  to  justify  and  noth- 
ing to  explain  away.  It  is  of  no  consequence 
whatever  if  all  the  monuments  ever  created, 
all  the  pictures  ever  painted,  all  the  build- 
ings ever  erected  by  the  great  architects  of 
the  world  be  destroyed,  if  by  their  destruc- 
tion we  promote  Germany's  victory  over  her 
enemies."  As  to  the  judgment  of  Amer- 
icans, he  says,  "  Let  neutral  people  cease 
their  empty  chatter,  which  may  well  be 
compared  to  the  twitter  of  birds.  And  of 
all  the  churches  and  all  the  castles  in  France 
which  have  shared  its  fate,  these  things  do 
not  interest  us.  They  call  us  barbarians. 
What  of  it  ?  "We  scorn  them  and  their 
abuse.  For  my  part  I  hope  that  in  this  war 
we  have  merited  the  title  of  barbarians." 

Does    all  this  mean  that  Germany  has 
broken  with  Twentieth  Century  ideals  of 
178 


Her  Ambitions 

peace  and  justice,  and  a  binding  obligation 
of  solemn  treaties  between  nations  ?  No 
man  and  no  nation  can  serve  two  masters. 
The  merchant  must  keep  his  financial  obli- 
gation with  his  banker,  or  else  when  more 
convenient  repudiate  them  ?  A  nation  must 
keep  its  solemn  treaties  with  other  nations,  or 
else  when  more  convenient  sneer  at  them  as 
"  scraps  of  paper  "  ?  To  nations,  as  to  in- 
dividuals, come  the  great  hours  of  decision. 
Of  the  nations  it  must  be  said  that  the  em- 
pire that  saveth  its  life  by  brute  force  shall 
lose  it ;  and  that  the  nation  that  loses  its 
life  rather  than  do  injustice  shall,  at  the  bar 
of  history,  save  its  life.  Nations  are  made 
up  of  individuals.  The  greatest  thought  that 
comes  to  the  individual  is  the  thought  of  his 
responsibility  to  God.  An  unjust  war  in  the 
Twentieth  Century  has  ceased  to  be  thought 
of  as  war  by  Christian  men.  The  most  sig- 
nificant thing  in  the  attitude  of  the  civilized 
world  to-day  is  the  cynicism  with  which  the 
educated  classes  and  leaders  of  public  opin- 
ion regard  the  so-called  decorations  of  men 
who  pillaged  neutral  Belgium.  But  a  mur- 
derous nation  can  become  a  Cain,  in  danger 
of  being  expelled  from  the  court  of  civilized 
peoples. 

179 


Italy  Old  and  New 

And  at  the  present  time  may  be  seen  the 
conscience  of  Italy  in  revolt.  No  man  can 
read  the  speeches  of  her  statesmen,  the 
articles  of  her  writers  in  their  reviews,  the 
editorials  in  her  newspapers,  without  feeling 
that  the  soul  of  Italy  is  horror-stricken,  and 
stands  back  in  utter  revulsion  from  the 
desolation  in  Belgium.  The  real  motive 
that  has  led  the  soul  of  Italy  to  break  with 
Austria  and  Germany  is  the  moral  motive, 
and  the  might  of  the  spiritual  imperative. 

The  three  chief  builders  of  the  new  Italy 
were  Mazzini  the  agitator,  Garibaldi  the 
soldier,  and  Cavour  the  organizer.  Fifty 
years  ago  Italy  was  a  broken  and  dissevered 
land,  the  fragments  having  been  distributed. 
Sardinia  held  Piedmont.  Austria  ruled 
Northern  Italy,  the  French  Emperor  another 
fragment,  the  Pope  had  four  small  States, 
where  he  was  a  temporal  king,  and  Ferdi- 
nand was  King  of  Naples  and  Sicily.  A 
map  of  Italy,  with  its  different  colours, 
standing  for  foreign  governments,  made  it 
look  like  a  patchwork  quilt,  and  gave  mean- 
ing to  Mazzini's  word,  "  Let  us  wipe  all  these 
colours  from  the  map  and  stain  the  map  one 
colour — if  need  be,  red."  All  government 
imposed  from  without  is  more  or  less  unjust, 
1 80 


Her  Ambitions 

by  reason  of  a  failure  to  understand  the  peo- 
ple. To  be  just  and  fair,  government  must 
be  based  on  self-control. 

Mazzini  was  the  Wendell  Phillips  of  the 
new  Italy.  His  voice  was  the  trumpet  that 
called  the  peasants  to  arms.  He  began  his 
work  about  1830.  His  influence  as  a  revolu- 
tionist was  almost  miraculous.  Imprisoned, 
Mazzini  escaped  to  London.  There  the  lead- 
ers of  the  literary  set,  Carlyle,  Froude, 
Grote,  Macaulay,  Lewes,  John  Stuart  Mill, 
became  his  close  friends.  His  organization 
was  secret.  Under  various  disguises  he 
managed  to  visit  Italy  at  least  once  each 
year.  Mazzini's  writings  became  a  kind  of 
Bible  to  the  revolutionists.  His  movement 
spread  like  a  contagion. 

Then  came  Garibaldi  as  a  soldier  to 
make  the  revolution  practical.  Beginning 
his  career  as  a  sailor,  Garibaldi  fought  in 
various  revolutions  in  South  America, — not 
as  a  soldier  of  fortune,  going  up  and  down 
the  world  in  search  of  adventure,  and  fo- 
menting discontent,  but  as  a  helper  of 
peoples  struggling  to  be  free.  And  Gari- 
baldi was  good  as  gold,  true  as  truth,  brave 
as  a  lion,  simple  as  a  child  ;  and,  exiled,  with 
a  price  upon  his  head,  in  1850  he  came  to 
181 


Italy  Old  and  New 

New  York.  He  lived  on  Staten  Island  for 
three  years,  and  made  and  sold  tallow 
candles.  He  was  often  found  in  the  pews 
here  in  Plymouth  Church,  on  the  winter 
Sunday  nights.  In  New  York  he  organized 
his  society  of  Italian  patriots. 

In  1859  he  returned  to  Italy.  One  night 
he  announced  his  conviction  that  if  a  handful 
of  patriots  in  1776  could  achieve  independ- 
ence of  England,  five  million  ought  to  win 
a  united  Italy.  One  morning,  when  the 
people  awoke  in  Rome  and  Naples  they 
found  this  proclamation  :  "  Soldiers — What 
I  have  to  offer  you  is  this :  Hunger,  thirst, 
cold,  heat,  no  pay,  no  barracks,  no  rations, 
frequent  alarms,  forced  marches,  charges  at 
the  point  of  the  bayonet.  Whoever  loves 
honour  and  fatherland,  follow  me  ! "  And 
to  the  bitter  end  his  soldiers,  ragged  and 
bloody,  followed  him. 

As  an  illustration  of  his  people's  devotion 
to  this  leader,  we  may  recall  an  incident  of 
the  time  when  Garibaldi  was  in  hiding  be- 
cause of  a  price  set  on  his  head.  His  wife 
was  ill  and  dying,  and  Garibaldi  was  hidden 
in  the  mountain  fastness.  To  visit  his  wife 
it  was  necessary  to  ride  straight  across  the 
land,  through  country,  village  and  town. 
182 


Her  Ambitions 

For  an  Italian  to  see  Garibaldi  and  not  de- 
nounce him  was  to  suffer  imprisonment. 
The  hero  started,  boldly,  across  the  land. 
"Word  went  on  in  advance  that  he  was 
coming.  The  farmers  beside  the  road  turned 
their  backs  and  shielded  their  eyes,  speaking 
only  words  of  affection  as  the  silent  soldier 
passed.  The  people  in  the  villages  went  in 
the  houses  and  pulled  down  their  blinds,  and 
at  high  noon  Garibaldi  rode  through  the  de- 
serted towns  that  were  as  silent  as  grave- 
yards. He  closed  the  eyes  of  his  wife  in 
death,  and  returned  in  safety  to  his  hiding 
place.  History  holds  no  finer  tale.  What 
Garibaldi  gave  the  people  in  devotion,  they 
returned  in  loyalty,  and  were  willing  to 
suffer  unto  blood,  striving  against  tyranny. 
Then  entered  the  scene,  to  organize  into 
constitutional  form  the  agitations  of  Maz- 
zini  and  the  victories  of  Garibaldi,  Count 
Cavour,  prime  minister  of  the  gallant  soldier 
Victor  Emmanuel,  King  of  Sardinia,  who  had 
privately  encouraged  Garibaldi.  Cavour  was 
born  a  patrician,  the  owner  of  rich  estates. 
He  fell  heir  to  all  the  wisdom  of  Italy,  was 
widely  travelled,  knew  every  foreign  capital. 
He  was  essentially  a  man  of  intellect,  cold, 
shrewd,  far-sighted,  courageous,  of  great 


Italy  Old  and  New 

initiative,  of  marvellous  resources.  What 
Bismarck  did  for  Germany,  that  and  more 
Cavour  did  for  Italy.  The  Iron  Chancellor 
won  many  victories  by  mailed  hand  and 
sheer  brute  force.  Cavour  relied  upon  the 
intellect  and  superior  wisdom  for  his  great 
diplomatic  battles  and  victories. 

Few  men  have  ever  tried  so  patiently  to 
fit  themselves  for  a  great  mission.  He  went 
to  France,  and  to  England,  to  study  at  first 
hand  the  revolution  in  both  countries.  He 
met  every  man  in  Europe  whom  he  could 
possibly  meet,  who  could  give  him  any 
guidance  and  counsel.  Finally  he  adopted 
the  policy  of  playing  the  interests  of  one 
nation  off  against  another.  Cavour  finally 
succeeded  in  forming  an  alliance  of  the 
strong  nations  against  the  enemies  of  Italy. 
He  detached  both  England  and  France  from 
their  relations  with  Austria.  The  task  seemed 
impossible.  There  were  Austrian  armies  to 
be  expelled,  French  armies  to  be  induced  to 
withdraw,  the  armies  of  Naples  to  be  de- 
feated, the  Pope's  temporal  power  and  his 
soldiers  to  be  broken  down.  Cavour  had 
but  the  unorganized  revolutionists  of  dis- 
severed Italy  to  support  him,  and  yet  with 
these,  chiefly  under  Garibaldi  and  finally 
184 


Her  Ambitions 

with  Victor  Emmanuel's  forces,  he  was  victo- 
rious. It  was  a  marvellous  achievement. 
And  when  at  length  Italy  was  one  nation 
and  free,  and  the  capital  was  moved  to  Rome, 
and  instead  of  four  foreign  banners  the  peo- 
ple followed  one  flag,  Italy  went  into  trans- 
ports of  gratitude  and  joy.  This  is  the  ex- 
planation of  the  glowing  enthusiasm  of  the 
Italian  people  during  the  summer  of  1911, 
when  they  celebrated  the  fiftieth  anniversary 
of  their  Italian  independence. 

The  Countess  Cesaresco  (in  "  The  Libera- 
tion of  Italy  ")  records  two  fine  things  : 

"By  Cavour's  advice  Victor  Emmanuel 
offered  Garibaldi  a  dukedom  and  the  Collar 
of  the  Annunziata,  which  confers  the  rank 
of  Cousin  to  the  King,  besides  riches  to  sup- 
port these  honours.  He  refused  everything, 
and  retired  to  Caprera  [where  he  had  a  farm], 
poorer  than  when  he  left  it." 

The  overmastering  movement  in  Italy  of 
late  has  been  an  economic  movement.  The 
first  thing  that  strikes  the  scholar  is  the  num- 
ber of  books  that  Italians  are  publishing  on 
economic  problems.  The  reason  of  this  is 
not  far  to  seek.  Up  to  recent  years  all  the 
resources  of  Italy,  with  its  lands,  were  in  the 
hands  of  a  few  aristocrats  and  titled  people 
185 


Italy  Old  and  New 

and  of  the  Eoman  Church.  The  peasants 
owned  no  land.  Transfers  of  property  were 
difficult.  The  few  had  everything,  owned 
Italy,  and  the  many  had  nothing.  Poverty 
was  all  but  universal,  and  very  bitter.  The 
poor  and  their  leaders  raised  the  question  how 
the  lands  could  be  broken  up  and  sold  to  the 
people ;  how  the  tax  burden  could  be  lifted 
from  the  shoulders  of  the  poor,  who  were 
least  fitted  to  bear  them,  and  transferred  to 
the  rich  landowners  who  were  best  fitted  to 
carry  them.  It  was  found  that  no  civilized 
country  was  so  burdened  with  taxes.  Men 
were  taxed  for  every  bullock  and  goat  that 
was  slain ;  taxed  for  every  bushel  of  wheat 
that  was  raised  and  for  every  litre  of  oil  and 
wine.  The  landlord  was  taxed  for  each 
electric  light,  and  on  the  basis  of  every 
servant  that  assisted  his  guests.  The  weight 
of  taxes  crushed  the  people.  The  schools 
also  were  unsatisfactory  and  the  people 
ignorant.  Books  were  expensive  and  news- 
papers too  high  for  the  poor  to  read.  Every- 
thing went  into  a  state  of  flux. 

Added  to  the  movement  against  the  aris- 
tocratic   centralization    of    land,    property 
and  privilege  and  law  in  the  hands  of  a 
few,  came  a  similar  movement  against  the, 
1 86 


Her  Ambitions 

Pope  claiming  temporal  power.  Autocracy 
is  the  government  by  one  man  ;  aristocracy 
is  the  government  by  a  few ;  democracy  is 
the  government  by  the  many  ;  anarchy  is  the 
negation  of  all  government,  in  that  every 
citizen  is  a  runaway  orb.  Now  if  you  adopt 
democracy,  you  must  apply  it  to  all  the  de- 
partments of  human  life.  In  this  Republic 
we  diffuse  liberty,  giving  political  and  indus- 
trial democracy  ;  we  diffuse  knowledge,  giv- 
ing educational  democracy ;  we  diffuse  relig- 
ion, giving  ecclesiastical  democracy. 

But  how  can  Italy  have  political,  educa- 
tional and  industrial  democracy,  and  yet  per- 
manently maintain  ecclesiastical  autocracy, 
which  is  the  government  by  one  ?  Democ- 
racy is  in  the  air.  It  is  a  world  movement. 
Like  a  beautiful  summer  climate,  it  is 
changing  the  world.  Free  on  three  sides  of 
life,  men  wish  to  be  self-governing  on  the 
fourth. 

Out  of  that  great  struggle  came  the  New 
Italy, — not  yet  working  altogether  smoothly 
with  its  combination  of  monarchical  and 
democratic  institutions,  but  marvellously 
transformed  by  the  spirit  of  free  unity. 
And  we  see  with  wonder  its  universities,  its 
new  art  movement,  its  new  political  economy, 
187 


Italy  Old  and  New 

its  new  monetary  system  and  its  new  patriot- 
ism. 

Whether  she  enter  the  war  or  stand  neutral, 
Italy's  influence  in  this  world  crisis  will  be 
great. 


RESOURCES  OF  ITALY,  1913 ' 
Area  in  square  miles,  110,659. 
Population,  35,238,997.  2 
Wealth,  $20,000,000,000. 
National  debt,  $2,776,089,420. 
Annual  revenue,  $530,399,180. 
Army  budget  (1913-1914),  $71,110,000. 
Navy  budget  (1913-1914),  $50,789,230. 
Army  :  Standing,  250,000  )  ,  ft9ft  Oftft 

Reserves,  770,000  {  l»ww»w 

'Estimates  from  the  War  Gazetteer,  N.  Y.  Evening 
Post  Company,  Copyright. 
'  Latest  estimate,  37,500,000. 


1 88 


VIII 

Holland  and  Germany: 
The  Mouth  of  the  Rhine 


They  [Belgium  and  Holland]  control  the  out- 
let of  the  Rhine,  and  therefore  can  prevent  Ger- 
many's complete  utilization  of  the  splendid  natural 
highway.  .  .  .  The  possession  of  these  two 
countries,  moreover,  would  at  once  give  Germany 
the  great  colonial  empire  of  which  she  dreams. 
Holland  owns  Java  and  the  Celebes,  admirably 
fitted  for  colonization,  from  whom  for  three  cen- 
turies she  has  drawn  a  princely  revenue  :  she 
owns  a  fertile  section  of  Guiana  and  rich  islands 
in  the  West  Indies.  .  .  .  Belgium  owns  the 
vast  Congo  Free  State,  one  of  the  wealthiest  of 
European  dependencies.  ...  If  their  colonies 
alone  could  be  retained,  Germany  could  restore 
the  autonomy  of  those  states  in  Europe,  pay  a 
heavy  war  indemnity,  and  yet  find  the  war  worth 
while. 

ROLAND  G.  USHER. 
' '  Pan-  Germanism, "  1913. 


VIII 

HOLLAND  AND    GERMANY: 
THE  MOUTH  OF  THE  RHINE 

THE  indebtedness  of  this  Republic  to 
Dutchmen  cannot  be  doubted.  We 
can  never  forget  that  when  our  Pilgrim 
Fathers  were  exiled  from  England  it  was 
Holland  that  gave  them  succour  and  protec- 
tion. 

Queen  Mary,  Queen  Elizabeth  and  King 
James  were  harsh  with  brigands,  traitors 
and  murderers,  but  England's  rulers  reserved 
the  uttermost  of  harshness  for  her  independ- 
ent teachers,  who  were  the  founders  of  our 
Congregational  faith  and  order.  In  1610 
there  were  already  several  thousand  fugi- 
tives who  had  been  stripped  of  their  goods, 
and  threatened  with  personal  mutilation, 
who  succeeded  in  evading  the  soldiers,  and 
making  their  way  to  Holland.  The  centre 
of  their  settlement  was  Delfthaven,  a  suburb 
of  Rotterdam.  An  old  Dutch  minister 
offered  the  exiles  the  use  of  his  church  on 
Sunday  afternoons. 

191 


Holland  and  Germany 

Standing  up  in  this  pulpit,  late  in  July, 
1620,  John  Eobinson  looked  down  upon  a 
hundred  and  twenty  men  and  women  who 
had  been  under  his  pastoral  care  but  had 
determined  to  seek  in  America  freedom  to 
worship  God,  and  claimed  for  the  devoted 
band  of  Pilgrims  the  promise  given  to 
Abraham  :  "  Get  thee  out  from  thy  country 
and  thy  people  to  a  land  that  I  will  show 
thee ;  and  in  blessing  I  will  bless  thee,  and 
in  multiplying  I  will  multiply  thee ;  and  in 
thee  and  thy  children  after  thee  shall  all  the 
families  of  the  earth  be  blessed." 

A  few  hours  later,  the  leaky  Speedwell 
sailed  away  to  England,  and  finally  at  Plym- 
outh the  Mayflower  took  the  adventurers 
and  bore  them  across  the  ocean.  Thus  the 
enterprise  that  ended  with  the  founding  of 
this  Republic  was  indissolubly  linked,  not 
only  with  England,  but  also  with  Holland. 

It  was  a  group  of  Dutchmen,  too,  who 
founded  New  York,  the  greatest  of  our  com- 
monwealths and  the  greatest  of  our  cities. 
It  was  Holland  that  harboured  the  English 
Tyndale  and  his  printing-press,  and  made 
possible  a  Bible  in  the  language  of  the 
English  people.  From  Holland,  too,  came 
Erasmus,  with  the  new  culture.  The  Nine- 
192 


The  Mouth  of  the  Rhine 

teenth  Century  Holland  has  given  us  optical 
instruments  and  the  new  horticulture;  nor 
must  we  forget  that  Holland  gave  the  world 
its  greatest  artist,  for  Rembrandt  is  first,  and 
there  is  no  second.  By  common  consent, 
"The  Night  Watch"  of  Rembrandt  is  the 
world's  greatest  masterpiece. 

The  world  owes  an  immeasurable  debt  to 
the  little  States.  When  nature  has  anything 
precious,  she  wraps  it  up  in  a  small  package. 
Sunflowers  have  bulk ;  the  tiny  arbutus  and 
the  wee  violet  have  intensity  of  perfume. 
Not  the  vast  desert  of  Arabia,  but  the  little 
isolated  Palestine  gave  us  ethics  and  religion. 
Not  the  plains  of  Asia  Minor,  but  that  little 
emerald  strip  of  verdure  around  Athens  gave 
us  intellect  and  literature.  Little  Venice, 
little  Switzerland,  little  England,  little  Hol- 
land— these  are  the  brave  builders  of  States, 
the  founders  of  Commonwealths ! 

So  small  is  Holland  that  I  might  almost 
call  her  the  royal  postage-stamp  stuck  on  the 
corner  of  Europe.  Her  lands  number  about 
thirteen  thousand  square  miles,  her  people  six 
million.  Her  great  cities  are  few,  Amster- 
dam, Rotterdam  and  The  Hague.  But  the 
average  wealth  in  Holland  and  the  level  of 
intelligence  are  quite  unique.  For  centuries 
193 


Holland  and  Germany 

the  neighbouring  States  and  powerful  rulers 
have  turned  covetous  eyes  upon  Holland, 
and  with  sufficient  reason. 

I.  Holland's  rich  farming  lands  are 
unequalled  because  they  are  at  the  mouth  of 
one  of  the  greatest  rivers  in  Europe.  It  is 
proverbial  that  lands  at  the  head  waters  of 
a  river  are  poor,  with  scant  soil :  witness  the 
lands  on  the  hillsides  of  the  Alps,  whence 
the  Ehine  takes  its  rise.  But  lands  at  the 
mouths  of  great  rivers  are  always  rich :  wit- 
ness the  Deltas  at  the  mouths  of  the  Nile, 
the  Amazon,  and  the  Mississippi.  Mountains 
and  hills  are  vast  mineral  compost  heaps 
that  dissolve  through  snow  and  rain  and  con- 
tribute their  stimulants  to  the  hungry  fields 
at  the  mouth  of  the  river.  From  thence  the 
Mississippi  Valley  has  its  richest  lands,  now 
scarcely  better  than  swamp  land,  in  Louisi- 
ana and  Arkansas.  These  lands  have  a  wash 
of  a  thousand  miles  eastward  from  the  top 
of  the  Rockies,  and  eight  hundred  miles 
westward  from  the  Alleghanies.  The  far- 
ther away  you  travel  from  the  hills  in  which 
a  river  takes  its  rise,  the  richer  the  banks  of 
that  river  and  the  more  generous  the  harvests 
reaped  from  field  and  meadow.  For  two 
thousand  years  the  peasants  have  sown  and 
194 


The  Mouth  of  the  Rhine 

reaped  and  gathered  into  barns  in  that  rich 
delta  formed  by  the  three  mouths  of  the 
Kiver  Ehine.  Covetous  kings  have  turned 
eager  eyes  towards  that  land,  just  as  men  in 
the  olden  time  looked  longingly  towards  the 
Nile,  that  was  the  wheat  granary  for  the 
ancient  world. 

II.  When  Bernhardi  speaks  of  the  warn- 
ing given  Holland,  that  her  territory  would 
be  occupied,  if  she  took  one  single  step  that 
was  unfriendly  to  Germany,  there  was  an- 
other motive,  doubtless,  in  the  mind  of  the 
man  who  believes  that  might  makes  right, 
that  the  voice  of  cannon  is  the  voice  of  God 
and  that  if  his  country  wants  anything  it 
should  "  first  take  what  it  wants  and  after- 
wards make  the  explanation."  The  Ger- 
many that  wants  the  newly  discovered  and 
all  but  inexhaustible  iron  mines  of  Northern 
France,  and  the  coal  and  iron  mines  of  South 
Belgium,  wants  the  oil  fields  of  the  Dutch 
colonies.  Holland  owns  Java,  Sumatra, 
Borneo  and  a  multitude  of  rich  islands. 
From  those  colonies  come  not  only  sugar, 
coffee,  rice,  tea  and  indigo,  but,  above  all, 
these  great  colonies  are  rich  in  coal,  natural 
gas  and  oil.  The  estimates  that  Dutch  bank- 
ers placed  upon  the  fortune  of  Queen  Wil- 
195 


Holland  and  Germany 

helmina's  uncle  represent  hundreds  of  mil- 
lions of  dollars,  and  yet  that  descendant  of 
"William  the  Silent  owned  but  a  tithe  of  the 
edge  of  one  of  these  colonies.  To-day  these 
vast  islands  are  still  to  be  developed.  The 
far-off  Eastern  world  goes  to  Java  for  its  oil 
to-day,  while  the  refineries  in  Rotterdam  are 
all  fed  by  the  oil  fields  in  the  Far  East. 
Therefore  the  country  that  possesses  itself  of 
the  Dutch  colonies  will  have  motive  power 
for  its  steamships,  and  for  its  citizens  wealth 
that  is  quite  beyond  the  dreams  of  avarice. 

III.  Thus,  if  Germany  wants  the  har- 
bours and  seacoast  of  Belgium  she  has  been 
for  a  hundred  years  still  more  anxious  to  ob- 
tain the  mouth  of  the  Rhine  at  Rotterdam. 
There  was  a  time  when  Hamburg  grew  more 
rapidly  than  any  city  in  Germany,  but  now, 
for  some  years,  Rotterdam  has  increased  in 
shipping  so  rapidly  as  to  outstrip  her  rival. 
Think  of  all  the  treasures  of  the  fields  that 
come  down  the  Rhine  out  of  the  heart  of  Ger- 
many, and  pay  tribute  to  Holland.  Remem- 
ber that  in  that  river  and  harbour  hundreds 
of  ships  have  often  been  seen  at  anchor.  But 
despite  the  fact  that  Holland  is  surrounded 
by  strong  nations,  for  some  reason  she  has 
succeeded  in  maintaining  her  independence. 
196 


The  Mouth  of  the  Rhine 

Prussia  seized  Silesia,  coerced  Bavaria,  con- 
quered Saxony,  took  Schleswig-Holstein,  and 
forced  them  into  an  alliance.  Where  are 
the  hidings  of  power  in  these  Dutchmen  ? 

In  one  of  the  most  fascinating  books  ever 
written,  "  The  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic," 
John  Lothrop  Motley  explains  the  continu- 
ance of  Holland  by  the  heroism  of  her  peo- 
ple. To  begin  with,  in  a  way,  they  created 
their  own  land.  One  of  the  dykes  builded 
against  the  North  Sea  is  sixty  feet  high,  and 
standing  on  the  top,  one  turns  to  look  down 
upon  steeples,  the  roofs  of  houses,  banks, 
factories.  There  are  peasants  on  the  steep 
hillsides  of  the  Rhine  who  carried  the  dirt 
that  they  thrust  into  the  crevices  between 
the  rocks,  in  which  they  have  planted  vines, 
and  upon  which  they  have  their  sustenance. 
But  Holland  did  a  greater  thing.  She 
wrested  the  delta  of  the  Rhine  from  the 
hand  of  the  ocean,  and  by  vigilance  and 
engineering  skill  created  one  of  the  richest 
and  most  fruitful  of  all  the  lands  of  the 
earth. 

For  the  explanation  of  Holland  and  the 

rise  of  the  free  institutions  in  the  first  United 

States  of  which  history  has  any  knowledge, 

we  must  go  back  to  William  the  Silent. 

197 


Holland  and  Germany 

Thrilling  indeed  the  story  of  his  romantic 
and  tumultuous  career !  Born  in  a  castle,  he 
was  hereditary  Prince  of  Orange  and  Count 
of  Nassau.  He  was  educated  as  a  Roman 
Catholic  in  the  court  of  the  Emperor  Charles 
the  Fifth  of  Spain  (who  at  that  time  owned 
the  Netherlands),  and  became  commander  of 
the  Xetherland  Army,  and  in  1555  stadt- 
holder  or  governor  of  Holland,  Zealand  and 
Utrecht,  serving  in  the  war  with  France, 
and  being  prominent  in  negotiating  peace 
conditions.  His  youth  was  amidst  luxury, 
wealth  and  splendour,  and  his  early  man- 
hood distinguished  with  honours  and  titles. 
But  if  in  youth  he  dwelt  in  a  palace,  and  had 
princes  for  his  companions,  he  soon  became 
like  David,  the  champion  of  the  people 
against  the  despot.  Yea,  more:  the  hero 
of  a  lost  cause,  the  victim  of  an  assassin's 
hate.  Like  Robert  Bruce,  Prince  William 
was  a  wanderer,  hiding  from  his  enemies. 
Like  Dante,  he  knew  the  weariness  of  an 
exile's  lot,  and  ate  the  bread  of  charity.  He 
was  the  heir  to  titles  and  vast  estates,  and 
to-day  his  blood  flows  in  the  veins  of  almost 
all  the  monarchs  of  the  earth,  and  yet,  slain 
at  fifty-one  years  of  age,  he  spent  his  last 
years  in  poverty  and  left  his  children  less 
198 


The  Mouth  of  the  Rhine 

than  one  hundred  guilders.  In  physique  he 
was  a  striking  figure ;  in  person,  most 
elegant ;  in  manners,  gentle  and  accom- 
plished. Strictly  speaking,  he  was  the  fore- 
runner of  all  the  modern  leaders  of  liberty. 
Long  before  John  Pym  and  Oliver  Cromwell 
denied  the  divine  right  of  kings,  "William  the 
Silent  made  his  protest  against  King  Philip. 
In  an  era  when  the  rest  of  the  world  had  not 
dreamed  of  toleration  and  liberty  in  religion, 
this  prince  wrote  these  words,  that  are  now 
recorded  on  a  tablet  in  the  great  square  of 
The  Hague — words  that  shaped  the  thinking 
of  our  Pilgrim  Fathers,  words  that  climbed 
above  the  entrance  of  the  World's  Fair  in 
Chicago,  in  1893  :  "  We  declare  to  you  that 
you  have  no  right  to  interfere  with  the  con- 
science of  any  one,  so  long  as  he  has  done 
nothing  to  work  injury  to  another  person  or 
public  sentiment." 

Far  to  the  south  of  Holland  was  Spain, 
with  its  king,  Philip  II.,  son  of  the  Emperor 
Charles,  and  still  controlling  the  Nether- 
lands. At  that  time  Spain  was  the  richest 
and  most  powerful  nation  in  Europe.  By 
the  merest  .accident  the  Genoese  Columbus 
won  the  favour  of  Queen  Isabella.  Three 
little  ships,  scarcely  larger  than  the  oyster 
199 


Holland  and  Germany 

boats  in  Jamaica  Bay,  were  put  at  his  dis- 
posal, but  never  did  a  king  and  queen 
make  an  investment  that  brought  returns  so 
vast.  A  single  Spanish  ship  returning  home 
brought  $15,500,000  in  gold,  not  to  mention 
the  treasures  of  silver,  and  this,  too,  at  a  time 
when  gold  was  worth  ten  times  what  it  is 
now.  Prescott  tells  us  that  when  the 
Spanish  soldiers  took  the  capital  of  Peru 
they  spent  weeks  in  bringing  together  the 
vessels  of  gold  and  silver  which  they  found 
in  the  temples  and  palaces.  When  Cortez 
approached  the  palace  of  Mexican  Monte- 
zuma,  that  king's  messengers  met  the  gen- 
eral, bearing  gifts  from  their  lord.  These 
gifts  included  two  hundred  pounds  avoir- 
dupois of  gold  for  their  leader  and  two 
pounds  of  gold  for  each  soldier. 

The  full  value  of  the  treasures  that  Spain 
carried  away  from  the  cities  of  the  new 
continent  will  never  be  known.  The  Pilgrim 
Fathers  found  a  wilderness  and  turned  it  into 
a  garden.  The  Spanish  soldiers  found  towns 
and  cities  and  turned  them  into  a  wilder- 
ness. Our  fathers  came  seeking  for  God ; 
the  Spaniards  sought  gold.  For  fifty  years 
these  adventurers  went  through  Mexico, 
looting  the  towns,  pillaging  the  cities, 
200 


The  Mouth  of  the  Rhine 

butchering  the  people,  lifting  the  torch  upon 
cottage  and  palace  alike.  The  awful  anguish 
wrought  upon  these  helpless  people  makes  up 
one  of  the  bloodiest  chapters  in  history. 
The  eagle,  pouncing  upon  the  dove ;  the 
panther,  leaping  upon  the  fawn,  faintly 
interpret  to  us  the  savage  cruelty  of  the 
Spaniard,  raging  through  this  New  World. 
And  when  the  Spanish  ships  came  home, 
laden  with  treasure,  the  Emperor  Charles 
hired  soldiers  of  fortune,  bought  weapons, 
marched  with  his  armies  into  Africa  and 
Sicily,  conquered  a  part  of  France,  took  over 
what  is  now  Southern  Germany,  and  dreamed 
his  dream  of  a  world  empire.  When  a  cen- 
tury had  passed,  after  Columbus'  discovery  of 
the  New  World,  Spain  had  obtained  treasures 
sufficient  to  conquer  many  poorer  States  and 
to  organize  and  equip  the  best-trained  army 
of  veterans  then  in  the  world. 

But  at  last  there  was  nothing  left  in  the 
New  World  but  agriculture,  and  the  Span- 
iard was  a  brigand  and  a  looter.  Then  it 
was  that  King  Philip  cast  about  for  fresh 
fields  of  exploitation.  To  the  north  were 
the  Netherlands,  under  his  own  sway,  rich  as 
a  treasure-chest  in  a  king's  palace.  While 
Spain  had  been  looting  lands,  Flemings  and 
201 


Holland  and  Germany 

Hollanders  had  developed  the  shipping  in- 
dustry. For  fifty  years  they  had  been  the 
carriers  of  the  world's  commerce.  Their 
navigators  were  the  boldest,  their  ships  the 
largest  and  the  swiftest,  their  merchants 
the  most  enterprising  in  Europe.  Amster- 
dam became  the  commercial  centre  of  the 
world.  Her  merchants  built  a  stock  ex- 
change in  which  five  thousand  members  met 
daily  to  buy  and  sell.  Within  the  city  walls 
were  included  some  of  the  most  splendid  edi- 
fices in  Christendom.  Paris  alone  exceeded 
Amsterdam  in  splendour.  Sailing  vessels 
then  were  small,  in  comparison  with  our 
ocean  steamers,  but  often  a  single  day  wit- 
nessed the  clearing  of  five  hundred  ships, 
and  not  infrequently  2,500  boats  were  an- 
chored in  its  harbour.  Its  linens,  its  tapes- 
tries and  woolen  goods  were  famed  through- 
out the  world.  The  homes  of  its  burghers 
were  models  of  comfort  and  luxury.  By 
reason  of  this  intelligence  and  enterprise, 
the  peasant  classes  of  Holland  became  more 
prosperous  than  the  upper  classes  of  other 
nations.  Small  was  the  land,  but  within  its 
limits  were  two  hundred  and  eight  walled 
cities,  sixty-three  hundred  villages,  guarded 
by  a  belt  of  sixty  fortresses. 
202 


The  Mouth  of  the  Rhine 

Little  wonder  that  omnivorous  Spain 
looked  longingly  towards  this  land  and 
meditated  plans  for  breaking  down  its  inde- 
pendence, crushing  its  Protestantism,  looting 
its  cities  and  transferring  its  treasures  from 
the  chests  of  the  Dutch  burghers  to  the  vaults 
of  the  Spanish  cavaliers  1  For  at  the  con- 
clusion of  the  Council  of  Trent,  in  1563, 
King  Philip  of  Spain  was  intent  upon  spread- 
ing the  Catholic  faith  by  persecuting  the 
Protestants,  and  had  made  his  stern  sister, 
Margaret  of  Parma,  Regent  of  the  Nether- 
lands, where  she  vigorously  carried  out  his 
evil  will.  Prince  William,  with  the  Flemish 
Counts  Egmont  and  Horn — although  Cath- 
olics— united  in  protests  against  the  sub- 
version of  their  civil  and  religious  liberties, 
but  to  no  avail.  For  in  156T  Philip  sent  a 
fit  agent  to  enforce  submission  and  to  exact 
plunder. 

The  man  whom  Philip  placed  at  the  head 
of  his  army  was  the  most  accomplished  and 
capable  general  in  Europe.  Alva  had  been 
victorious  in  campaigns  in  Africa,  Italy, 
France  and  Germany.  He  had  been  called 
the  most  bloodthirsty  man  who  ever  led  his 
troops  to  battle,  and  therefore  he  was  sent  to 
the  Netherlands — then  including  the  north- 
203 


Holland  and  Germany 

era  Holland  and  the  southern  Flemish  prov- 
inces later  called  Belgium,  and  other  lands — 
to  satiate  his  wolfish  instinct.  His  army  in- 
cluded at  first  10,000  veterans,  thoroughly 
drilled  and  splendidly  equipped,  and  later 
were  added  6,000  horsemen,  notorious  for  the 
cruelty  with  which  they  had  treated  their 
captives  in  the  Italian  campaign.  Alva 
promised  to  turn  these  human  wolves  loose 
upon  the  Netherland  sheep. 

In  the  chapter  on  Belgium  we  have  noted 
the  inhuman  administration  of  Alva,  who 
united  civil,  religious,  and  treasure-seeking 
persecution  with  frightful  ingenuity  and 
malice.  Thousands  killed,  thousands  taking 
refuge  in  England,  and  thousands  fleeing 
from  the  Lower  Provinces  to  Holland  helped 
to  depopulate  and  ruin  the  unfortunate  Flem- 
ish land,  while  Amsterdam  at  first  actually 
gained  advantage  from  the  capable  refugees. 
The  Southern  Provinces,  beaten  down,  re- 
mained under  the  Spanish  dominion,  and 
after  passing  through  Austrian  and  French 
rule  were  finally  combined  by  the  European 
powers  into  a  Kingdom  now  called  Belgium. 
The  Northern  range,  although  persecuted 
and  harassed,  were,  through  the  valour,  wis- 
dom and  persistence  of  William  of  Orange, 
204 


The  Mouth  of  the  Rhine 

his  patriotic  associates,  and  the  hardy  cour- 
age of  the  people,  enabled  to  carry  on  the 
unequal  contest  for  independence  with  the 
strongest  nation  in  Europe. 

Outraged  by  Alva's  cruelty,  "William  the 
Silent  resigned  his  titles,  fled  from  his  palace 
and  crossed  the  frontier.  Alva  at  once  pro- 
claimed the  prince  an  outlaw  and  set  a  price 
upon  his  head.  For  seven  years  William 
toiled  tirelessly  to  defeat  the  bloody  Span- 
iard. He  seemed  to  have  the  strength  of 
twenty  men,  and  was  at  once  general,  states- 
man, diplomat,  financier,  admiral.  Like 
David,  he  went  through  the  forest  collecting 
outlaws,  the  men  who  had  grievances,  and 
organized  a  score  of  little  bands,  who  preyed 
upon  Alva's  army.  With  peasants  armed 
with  pikes  he  fought  veterans  who  had  guns 
and  six  thousand  horsemen.  He  put  out  to 
sea,  and  offered  prizes  to  freebooters,  bid- 
ding them  warn  the  home-coming  ships, 
bidding  them  go  to  English  harbours,  lest 
they  enrich  the  Spaniards. 

In  1566,  an  alliance  of  patriotic  noblemen 
had  gone  to  the  Regent  Margaret  with  a 
"  Request "  to  be  relieved  from  the  intoler- 
able conditions  and  persecutions  of  the  gov- 
ernment. As  the  delegates  approached  her, 
205 


Holland  and  Germany 

a  minister  said,  "  What,  Madame,  is  your 
Highness  afraid  of  these  beggars  ?  "  And 
on  the  contemptuous  rejection  of  their  peti- 
tion these  men  proudly  adopted  the  title,  and 
organized  a  league  of  marine  rovers  who 
really  were  the  pioneers  of  Holland's  sea- 
power.  To  these  "  Beggars  of  the  Sea,"  in 
1570  William  issued  letters  of  marque.  In 
1572,  under  cover  of  night,  they  captured 
Brill,  and  Flushing  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Scheldt,  and  maintained  a  safe  port  of  issu- 
ance and  refuge. 

Saddened  by  the  infamous  trial  and  execu- 
tion of  Egmont  and  Horn  ;  depressed  by  the 
defeat  and  death  of  his  two  brothers ;  heart- 
broken by  the  capture  of  his  eldest  son,  held 
as  a  hostage  in  Spain,  and  betrayed  by  Span- 
ish subtlety,  William  kept  his  hope  and  fed 
his  courage.  The  spring  of  1572  brought  his 
project  of  alliance  with  Admiral  Coligny, 
but  when  Bloody  Philip  discovered  the  plan 
he  formed  an  alliance  with  Charles  the  Ninth 
of  Paris  to  exterminate  the  Huguenots.  In 
August,  while  William  the  Silent  was  wait- 
ing upon  the  frontier  for  news  from  Coligny, 
that  brave  man  was  murdered  and  the  streets 
of  Paris  ran  red  with  the  blood  of  the  mas- 
sacre of  St.  Bartholomew.  On  that  day  the 
206 


The  Mouth  of  the  Rhine 

sun  was  turned  into  darkness  and  the  earth 
reeled  beneath  the  feet  of  the  prince,  and  for 
his  followers  the  last  star  fell  from  the  sky. 

That  night  William,  with  a  handful  of 
followers,  retreated  towards  the  Zuyder  Zee. 
Fired  by  the  news  from  Paris,  Spaniards 
pursued  him  with  cruelty  that  was  almost 
incredible.  Capturing  Neearven,  they  butch- 
ered every  man,  woman  and  child  and 
burned  every  building  to  the  ground. 
Driven  out  of  their  homes,  the  peasants 
were  overtaken  by  winter.  Then  Alva  or- 
dered seven  thousand  pairs  of  skates,  that 
his  soldiers  might  the  more  readily  pursue 
the  suffering  people. 

But  now  it  became  evident  to  even  the 
greedy  Philip  that  victory  meant  the  ruin  of 
the  land,  and  with  ruined  land  there  would 
be  no  treasure  left  for  future  looting ;  and 
the  Spaniard  made  overtures  of  peace  to 
Prince  "William.  To  these  the  hero  replied  : 
"  Peace  only  on  these  conditions :  freedom 
of  worship,  the  land  dedicated  to  liberty,  all 
Spaniards  in  civil  and  military  employment 
to  be  withdrawn."  As  an  answer,  in  1573- 
1574  the  Spanish  troops  concentrated  around 
Leyden,  holding  it  in  strict  siege.  Months 
later,  while  suffering  from  fever,  William  the 
207 


Holland  and  Germany 

Silent  decided  upon  a  bold  step.  The  starv- 
ing city  was  six  miles  from  the  sea.  Racked 
by  pain,  lying  at  death's  door,  in  the  inter- 
vals of  his  stupor  he  dictated  dispatches 
and  sent  out  messengers,  and  finally  decided 
to  have  the  dykes  cut.  There  came  a  three 
days'  storm  from  the  northwest,  and  the 
ocean  swept  in  over  the  drowning  land, 
while  ships  sailed  along  the  streets  of  the 
city  and  flung  bread  to  the  burghers  on  the 
housetops.  The  story  of  that  siege,  with  its 
horrors  and  its  heroisms,  is  among  the  mar- 
vels of  history. 

In  1579  William  succeeded  in  consoli- 
dating the  "  Seven  United  Provinces "  for 
the  common  defence.  Gradually,  they  were 
popularly  called  by  the  name  of  "  Holland," 
their  largest  member.  But,  like  Moses,  hav- 
ing led  the  people  out  of  the  wilderness,  this 
nation-builder  was  not  allowed  to  see  the 
Promised  Land.  He  was  now  fifty-one  years 
of  age.  For  years  his  steps  had  been  dogged 
by  hired  assassins,  but  he  had  escaped  the 
club,  the  dagger  and  the  assassin's  bullet. 
His  portraits  exhibit  him  as  a  man  whose  lips 
were  locked  with  iron  ;  whose  face  was  fur- 
rowed with  care,  while  his  look  was  that  of 
a  man  at  bay,  having  staked  life  and  life's 
208 


The  Mouth  of  the  Rhine 

work.  And  yet  he  was  one  of  the  most 
charming  of  companions,  of  such  winning 
address  that  it  was  said  that  "  every  time  he 
took  off  his  hat  he  won  a  subject  from  the 
King  of  Spain."  Philip  had  offered  a  reward 
of  eighty  thousand  guilders  for  the  assassina- 
tion of  William.  One  day,  a  traitor  shot  him 
through  the  throat,  and  for  weeks,  through 
hemorrhages,  he  was  at  the  point  of  death, 
but  by  sheer  force  of  will  he  recovered.  The 
end,  however,  was  inevitable. 

One  morning,  July  10,  1584,  a  determined 
young  Spaniard  who  had  forged  the  seals 
obtained  access  to  the  Prince's  house ;  having 
first  been  searched  by  the  guard,  he  was  with- 
out weapon.  The  traitor  delivered  his  forged 
letter,  and  then  asked  the  Prince  for  a  Bible 
and  the  loan  of  a  few  crowns.  Having  re- 
ceived the  gift  of  twelve  pieces  of  silver,  he 
went  down  into  the  courtyard,  and,  with  the 
Prince's  own  gift,  purchased  a  pistol  from  the 
guard,  and  returned  to  fire  three  shots  into 
that  kindly  breast.  Falling,  in  his  death 
struggle,  "William  commended  his  soul  unto 
God,  exclaiming,  "  What  will  now  become  of 
my  poor  people  !  "  Hearing  of  his  death  an 
hour  later,  says  the  historian,  "  the  little  chil- 
dren stood  and  sobbed  in  the  streets." 
209 


Holland  and  Germany 

"  Habit,  necessity,  and  the  natural  gifts  of 
the  man,"  says  Motley,  "had  combined  to 
invest  him  at  last  with  an  authority  which 
seemed  more  than  human.  There  was  such 
general  confidence  in  his  sagacity,  courage 
and  purity,  that  the  nation  had  come  to 
think  with  his  brain  and  act  with  his  hand. 
.  .  .  The  ban  of  the  Pope  and  the  offered 
gold  of  the  King  had  [by  assassination]  ac- 
complished a  victory  greater  than  any  yet 
achieved  by  the  armies  of  Spain,  brilliant  as 
had  been  their  triumphs." 

But  the  struggle  was  not  merely  one  for 
political  independence,  dear  as  is  such  a 
cause ;  it  was  the  determination  of  the 
people  of  that  barren  little  seacoast  land 
to  win  civil  and  religious  liberty — freedom 
of  conscience.  And  the  hearts  of  the  Hol- 
landers and  their  brethren  of  the  United 
Provinces  were  firmly  set.  On  the  very 
day  of  "William's  assassination  the  Estates 
of  Holland  passed  a  resolution  "  to  maintain 
the  good  cause,  with  God's  help,  to  the 
uttermost,  without  sparing  gold  or  blood." 
And  they  sent  out  letters  of  information  and 
encouragement  to  various  civil  and  military 
chiefs,  urging  them  "to  bear  themselves 
manfully  and  valiantly,  without  faltering 
210 


The  Mouth  of  the  Rhine 

in  the  least  on  account  of  the  great  mis- 
fortune that  had  occurred,  or  allowing  them- 
selves to  be  seduced  by  any  one  from  the 
union  of  the  States.'' 

We  cannot  follow  the  details  of  the  long 
and  varied  contest,  which  before  its  close 
involved  France  and  England ;  but  in  1609, 
forty-three  years  from  the  day  when  the 
"  Beggars  "  petitioned  the  Spanish  Regent 
to  relieve  their  people  from  the  oppressions 
of  the  Inquisition,  Spain  signed  a  treaty 
recognizing  the  United  Provinces  as  an  in- 
dependent Protestant  republic, — and,  more- 
over, asked  the  States-General  to  deal  kindly 
with  their  Catholic  fellow  citizens.  And  this 
request,  consistently  with  their  principles  of 
religious  freedom,  the  Netherlander  freely 
acceded  to. 

The  rise  of  the  present  Dutch  institutions 
is  traceable  to  the  States-General,  organized 
by  William  the  Silent.  The  government  is 
a  limited  monarchy,  presided  over  by  the 
queen,  with  an  assembly  of  two  Houses,  of 
which  the  lower  House  initiates  all  impor- 
tant bills. 

William  Elliott  Griffis,  in  "  The  American 
in  Holland,"  thus  condenses  their  political 
changes : — "  From  1568  the  House  of  Orange- 
211 


Hollarid  and  Germany 

Nassau  furnished  rulers  who  were  princes  in 
their  own  right  but  in  the  Dutch  Republic 
were  stadtholders  or  presidents.  From  1579 
until  1794  [except  during  twenty  years]  the 
Dutch  rulers  were  of  the  House  of  Orange. 
The  Republic  fell  in  1794  under  the  invasion 
of  the  French.  ...  In  1814  'the  Dutch 
took  Holland,'  drove  out  the  invaders,  and 
founded  a  national  constitution.  Then  they 
invited  the  princes  of  Orange  to  be  Kings 
or  constitutional  executives.  At  the  present 
day  Queen  Wilhelmina  reigns,  by  the  grace 
of  God  and  the  love  of  her  people." 

The  attitude  of  Germany  towards  Holland 
thus  far  is  one  of  threat,  while  Holland  holds 
herself  in  an  armed  neutrality.  What  Ger- 
many may  yet  do  for  the  mouth  of  the 
Rhine,  despite  her  treaty  obligations  to 
Holland,  may  perhaps  rest  on  two  ques- 
tions :  as  to  whether  it  is  worth  risking  the 
marvellous  assistance  which  Holland,  forced 
into  the  war,  could  render  the  Allies  in  the 
invasion  of  Germany  ;  and  whether  Germany 
herself  could  lose  her  soul  and  her  conscience, 
as  an  individual  can  do,  until  moral  issues 
become  obscure,  and  the  needle  of  the  moral 
compass  refuses  to  answer  to  the  pull  of  the 
Divine  influence. 

212 


The  Mouth  of  the  Rhine 

EESOUECES  OF  HOLLAND* 
Area  in  square  miles  (Continental),          12,648. 
(Colonial),         981,870. 

Population  ( Continental) ,      6, 102, 000. 

(Colonial),    38,225,885. 
Wealth,  $5,000,000,000. 
National  debt,  $461,649,000. 
Annual  revenue     -(Continental),     $91,823,000. 
(Colonial),   $111,865,000. 
Army  :  Standing,    23,000 ) 
Eeserves,  177,000  j 
Available, 
Unorganized, 

1From  "  The  World  Almanac,"  1915. 


213 


IX 

Austria -Hungary 

and  the  Coming 

United  States  of  Balkany 


A  Pan-Slavic  union  would  mean  the  predomi- 
nance of  Russia,  or  a  great  federation  of  the 
Slavic  lands.  But  the  Slavs  are  a  very  demo- 
cratic people,  and  exceedingly  fond  of  liberty. 
For  that  reason  they  are  not  disposed  to  yield  to 
Russian  absolutism.  And  Pan-Slavism  in  any 
form  would  mean  the  disruption  of  Austria.  So 
the  idea  seems  at  present  a  visionary  one.  Still, 
it  is  in  the  line  of  the  political  union  and  inde- 
pendence of  nationalities  which  has  characterized 
the  century  [XIX],  It  may  be  an  achievement 
of  the  Twentieth  Century  ;  but  if  realized  it  will 
involve  profound  rearrangements  of  the  present 
social  and  political  condition  of  Eastern  Europe. 

HARRY  PRATT  JUDSON. 
"  Europe  in  the  Nineteenth  Century"  igo8. 


IX 

AUSTRIA-HUNGARY  AND  THE 

COMING  UNITED  STATES 

OF  BALKANY 

SIXTY  years  ago  William  H.  Seward 
looked  towards  the  cotton-field  and  the 
slave-market,  and  thinking  of  the  justice  of 
God  began  to  talk  about  the  coming  conflict 
as  irrepressible  ;  while  the  country  lawyer, 
Abraham  Lincoln,  declared  that  the  Repub- 
lic must  become  all  slave  or  all  free.  During 
the  past  four  hundred  years  students  of  in- 
ternational politics  have  been  saying  in  their 
books  that  a  conflict  in  the  Balkans  was  in- 
evitable, and  that  the  whole  region  must 
become  all  Christian  or  all  Turk. 

During  these  centuries  war  has  been  almost 
continuous.  The  eras  of  the  eruption  of  Ve- 
suvius, when  the  mountain  pours  forth  lurid 
lava  and  buries  cities,  come  at  intervals  occa- 
sional, and  separated  by  long  years ;  but 
even  at  the  time  when  the  volcano  is  quies- 
cent, the  lava  is  always  boiling  in  the  crater, 
217 


Austria-Hungary 

and  tossing  from  side  to  side.  "Wars  between 
England  and  France  have  been  occasional, 
but  the  Balkan  volcano  is  always  simmering, 
and  throwing  off  deadly  gases.  In  1912  the 
repressed  revolt  burst  into  an  open  flame. 
Representatives  of  the  different  Balkan 
States  came  together  secretly  and  prepared 
a  rebellion  against  Turkey.  Diplomats  said 
that  agitation  was  ever-existent,  but  that  an 
open  alliance  between  the  Balkan  States  was 
impossible,  just  as  men  said  in  1775  that  co- 
operation between  the  Thirteen  Colonies  was 
an  impossibility.  The  forecast  was  wrong, 
and  the  Balkan  war  of  1912  proved  to  be  the 
beginning  of  the  most  terrible  conflict  that 
has  ever  shaken  our  earth. 

All  students  know  that  the  Balkan  revo- 
lutionists in  planning  for  the  United  States 
of  Balkany  steered  their  course  by  the  story 
of  the  American  Revolution.  Magazine  men 
and  newspaper  correspondents  who  followed 
the  fortunes  of  the  Balkan  army  have  had 
much  to  say  about  the  unceasing  references 
to  the  Confederation  between  the  Thirteen 
Colonies,  and  about  their  plans  to  make  the 
capitals  of  the  different  Balkan  States  to  be 
the  centres  of  State  government,  preparatory 
to  the  founding  of  a  new  capital  and  the  or- 
218 


The  Coming  United  States  of  Balkany 

ganization  of  a  republic  like  our  own.  Other 
nations  for  the  most  part  have  been  deeply 
and  sympathetically  moved  by  the  ambitions 
and  patriotism  of  the  Balkan  leaders,  while 
Germany  and  Austria-Hungary  have  been 
just  as  deeply  disappointed.  For  many 
years  Germany  has  been  shut  away  from 
the  open  coast  by  the  buffer  states,  Hol- 
land and  Belgium.  Ambitious  for  trade 
with  Asia,  Germany  planned  for  a  treaty 
with  Turkey,  the  right  of  railway  through 
to  the  Bosphorus,  with  another  German 
railway  carried  straight  through  to  the  Per- 
sian Gulf.  For  the  last  twenty  years  Ger- 
man statesmen  have  been  thinking,  not  in 
terms  of  Germany,  but  in  terms  of  the  world, 
and  have  looked  longingly  towards  foreign 
colonies  and  foreign  trade.  Then,  at  the 
very  moment  when  it  seemed  as  if  Germany 
was  about  to  realize  her  ambition,  events 
culminated  in  the  Balkan  revolution,  all  but 
expelling  the  Turk  from  Europe,  while  the 
new  United  States  of  Balkany,  that  is  still  a 
dream  and  on  the  lap  of  the  gods,  threatened 
to  interpose  a  barrier  that  would  shut  Ger- 
many and  Austria  away  from  the  Bosphorus, 
and  the  Bagdad  railway,  and  Asiatic  trade, 
just  as  effectively  as  Belgium  and  Holland 
219 


Austria-Hungary 

shut  Germany  away  from  the  most  favorable 
seaports. 

From  one  view-point  the  country  most 
seriously  affected  by  the  Balkan  revolution 
was  Austria-Hungary.  The  Dual  Monarchy 
is  the  largest  empire  in  Europe  west  of  Rus- 
sia. Her  possessions  cover  261,000  square 
miles  of  land,  the  empire  being  about  the  size 
of  Texas.  Her  population  includes  52,000,- 
000  of  people,  her  wealth  $55,000,000,000, 
while  her  diplomats  feel  that  Austria-Hun- 
gary has  the  key  to  all  the  problems  of 
Southeastern  Europe.  The  strength  of  the 
empire  is  in  the  loyalty  of  the  Austrians  and 
Hungarians  to  the  aged  Emperor,  Francis 
Joseph.  The  weakness  of  the  empire  is  in 
the  fact  that  ten  races  are  ruled  by  one 
sceptre,  while  four  religions — the  Roman, 
and  the  Protestant  faith,  the  Greek  church 
and  the  Mohammedan — are  all  active  in  the 
Dual  Monarchy.  Rich  in  iron,  coal  and 
forests,  blessed  with  great  rivers,  fat  valleys, 
and  majestic  mountains,  and  covered  with 
roads,  canals  and  railways,  Austria-Hungary 
has  for  centuries  maintained  a  unique  posi- 
tion among  the  governments  of  Europe. 

The  roots  of  this  great  conflict  for  the 
Dual  Monarchy  are  in  the  history  of  the  old 

220 


The  Coming  United  States  of  Balkany 

"  Holy  Roman  Empire."  Through  eighteen 
centuries  of  time  that  empire  had  journeyed 
forward,  until  men  came  to  think  its  power 
and  influence  even  eternal.  After  the  fall 
of  Rome,  Constantino  carried  the  archives  of 
the  empire  to  Byzantium,  which  became  his 
City  of  Constantinople  ;  and  when,  in  1456, 
Constantinople  fell  before  the  Turks,  the 
capital  of  the  Roman  Empire  was  carried  up 
the  Danube  to  the  city  of  Vienna.  Called 
"  Holy  "  from  its  combined  powers  of  church 
and  state,  "  Roman "  from  its  origin,  this 
empire  was  from  the  time  of  Charlemagne 
for  a  thousand  years  Germanic  in  territory, 
population  and  rulers.  At  last,  overthrown 
by  Napoleon,  the  Hapsburg  Francis  II.  of 
Austria,  in  August,  1806,  formally  abdicated 
the  empty  title  of  Emperor  over  an  empire 
that  had  ceased  to  exist,  retaining  the  impe- 
rial crown  of  Austria.  In  that  hour  the 
Holy  Roman  Empire,  with  all  the  wonderful 
events  and  institutions  of  more  than  eighteen 
hundred  years'  time,  came  to  an  end.  Since 
1806,  the  Emperors  of  Austria  have  chosen 
to  exercise  a  real  power  over  living  millions, 
and  to  settle  the  problems  of  the  Nineteenth 
and  Twentieth  Centuries,  rather  than  to  sur- 
round themselves  with  the  figment  that  they 
221 


Austria-Hungary 

were  the  successors  in  power  of  that  long 
line  of  emperors  that  began  with  the  Caesars 
in  their  palace  on  the  banks  of  the  Tiber. 

The  outstanding  figure  in  the  Austria  of 
to-day  is  the  old  Emperor  Francis  Joseph. 
For  nearly  seventy  years  this  monarch  has 
been  upon  the  throne  and  has  held  the 
sceptre  during  all  the  crises  that  have  swept 
over  Europe,  and  reconstructed  the  map  of 
that  continent.  In  retrospect  he  seems  the 
most  tragic  figure  in  modern  history.  When 
Queen  Victoria  celebrated  her  diamond  an- 
niversary she  was  called  "  the  happy  queen," 
having  lived  most  of  her  life  under  sunny 
fates,  while  the  aged  Emperor  of  Austria  has 
described  his  own  career  in  the  words  of  the 
Psalmist :  "  For  though  my  years  be  four- 
score years,  yet  is  their  strength  labour  and 
sorrow."  Francis  Joseph  suffered  the  loss 
of  his  Empress  at  the  hand  of  an  assassin ; 
his  son  and  heir  came  to  a  most  tragic  and 
violent  end ;  left  solitary  in  his  palace,  he 
prepared  to  transfer  his  treasures  to  a  dis- 
tant heir,  only  to  find  that  again  the  hand 
of  an  assassin  had  intervened.  A  strong, 
self-willed,  aggressive  man  in  his  youth,  he 
has  remained  aggressive  and  strong  into  his 
old  age ;  while  his  misfortunes,  his  age,  his 
222 


The  Coming  United  States  of  Balkany 

upright  personal  life  and  his  fidelity  to  his 
exacting  duties  have  endeared  him  to  his  peo- 
ple. But  in  these  days  his  armies  and  his 
interests  are  being  shattered,  and  his  hopes 
are  now  dissolving  like  snowflakes  in  a  black 
river. 

The  makers  of  Austria  include  many  names 
striking  and  brilliant,  but  it  was  an  Austrian 
Empress,  Maria  Theresa,  who  led  the  historic 
fight  against  Germany's  ruler,  Frederick  the 
Great.  It  was  Carlyle's  hero  who  turned 
Prussia  into  one  vast  military  camp.  It  was 
Frederick  who  taught  the  German  people  to 
look  upon  the  army  as  the  centre  of  all 
pride,  ambition,  and  hope.  It  was  Frederick 
who  made  the  scientist  and  scholar,  the 
artist  and  orator,  the  banker  and  manufac- 
turer, the  prophet  and  the  priest,  to  wait  at 
each  banquet  until  a  general  had  gone  in.  It 
was  Frederick  who  made  of  Prussia  and 
Germany  a  group  of  camps,  arsenals,  for- 
tresses, and  led  the  people  to  expect  military 
schools  and  military  reviews,  until,  being 
ready  for  war,  for  Germany  war  became  a 
logical  and  a  moral  necessity.  Thus  in  the 
middle  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  in  1741, 
Frederick  looked  with  covetous  eyes  towards 
Silesia.  That  fertile  and  beautiful  province 
223 


Austria- Hungary 

contained  twenty  thousand  square  miles,  and 
being  girt  about  with  mountains,  it  repre- 
sented a  treasure-chest — the  treasure  of 
Austria.  One  morning  the  people  of  the 
capital  awoke  to  discover  armed  men  dash- 
ing down  the  streets,  and  within  a  few  days 
the  unsuspecting  and  undefended  country 
was  in  the  hands  of  Frederick's  veterans. 

But  what  Queen  Elizabeth  was  to  England 
in  her  struggle  against  the  empire  of  Spain, 
that  Maria  Theresa  was  to  Austria.  Taking 
her  babe  in  her  arms,  the  Empress  called  a 
Diet  of  the  Nation,  and  after  her  address,  in 
which  she  told  the  story  of  the  wrongs  that 
Austria  had  suffered  at  the  hands  of  Prussia, 
she  lifted  up  the  babe,  and  with  streaming 
eyes  called  upon  them,  as  brave  men,  to  stand 
between  Frederick  the  Great  and  the  infant 
heir  to  the  throne.  One  hour  before  the  Em- 
press began  her  plea,  the  Diet  had  been  di- 
vided into  discordant  and  belligerent  camps, 
but  under  her  appeal  the  nobles  stood,  flung 
up  their  arms,  shouted  forth  their  allegiance, 
and  proclaimed  their  undying  hostility  to 
Frederick.  The  Prussian  king  was  amazed 
at  the  anger  of  Europe.  Concerning  the 
Empress'  plea,  Carlyle  said,  "  It  was  the 
little  stone,  broken  loose  from  the  mountain, 
224 


The  Coming  United  States  of  Balkany 

hitting  others,  big  and  little,  which  again  hit 
others,  with  their  leaping  and  rolling,  until 
the  whole  mountainside  was  in  motion  under 
the  law  of  gravity."  Victorious,  in  his  first 
war  of  resistance,  when  the  Austrian  Em- 
press tried  to  recover  the  possessions  from 
the  robber  Prussian,  the  time  came  in  1756 
when  the  nations  of  Europe  united  to  com- 
pel Frederick  to  let  go  his  grasp  upon  the 
treasure  he  had  seized.  Austria,  Russia, 
Sweden,  France,  and  the  lesser  States  united 
to  crush  the  man  who  held  that  if  he  saw 
anything  that  looked  good,  he  had  the  right 
of  might  and  force  to  seize  it. 

No  outlawed  bandit  ever  defended  himself 
and  his  stolen  booty  with  more  skill,  energy, 
and  enthusiasm  than  did  Frederick.  After 
seven  years,  Prussia  was  all  but  ruined.  The 
whole  land  was  devastated,  the  people 
staggered  under  the  burden  of  taxation, 
women  and  widows  did  their  own  work  and 
that  of  their  dead  husbands  and  fathers ;  the 
people  lived  on  crusts  and  wore  rags ;  Eng- 
land deserted  Frederick  ;  while  wave  after 
wave  of  famine,  disease,  and  sorrow  swept 
over  the  land  like  sheeted  storms.  Prussia 
became  one  of  the  poorest  states  of  Europe. 
During  the  latter  part  of  Frederick's  career 
225 


Austria-Hungary 

the  historian  tells  us  "it  was  rare  to  see 
there  either  a  silver  fork  or  a  silver  spoon,  to 
say  nothing  of  the  cheap  and  frugal  fare  of 
the  great  mass  of  the  people  and  their  com 
fortless  kind  of  life  with  hardly  any  luxuries 
except  tobacco  and  beer." 

Nothing  is  more  costly  than  military  vic- 
tories. The  fruit  that  Frederick  plucked 
from  the  Austrian  tree  proved  to  be  not  the 
apples  of  paradise,  but  the  apples  of  Sodom, 
stuffed  with  ashes  and  soot.  Germany  lost 
Silesia,  but  for  one  hundred  years  the  succes- 
sors of  Frederick  were  always  on  the  offen- 
sive, and,  so  to  speak,  slept  on  their  arms. 
It  was  England  that  gained  by  that  war, 
for  while  France  and  Prussia  and  Austria 
struggled  on  through  seven  bitter  years, 
England  developed  her  manufacturing  in- 
terests, built  a  navy,  and  became  the  first 
sea-power  in  the  world,  a  position  she  has 
never  lost  from  that  day  to  this, — just  as  it 
now  looks  as  if  the  United  States  has  her 
chance,  while  the  nations  of  Europe  are  at 
war,  to  develop  her  shipping  interests,  es- 
tablish her  trade  with  South  America,  found 
new  factories  and  shops,  and  become  what 
Gladstone  once  prophesied  she  would  be- 
come, "  the  market-place  of  the  world." 
226 


The  Coming  United  States  of  Balkany 

Many  stars  shine  in  the  constellation  of 
genius  that  have  shed  their  light  upon  the 
Dual  Monarchy,  and  these  stars  are  brilliant 
and  enduring.  If  literature  is  the  greatest 
of  the  fine  arts  in  terms  of  instruction,  music 
is  the  supreme  art  in  terms  of  inspiration  and 
healing  influence.  We  must  ne\rer  forget 
that  the  great  names  in  the  realm  of  music 
are  associated  with  the  opera  house  of  Vi- 
enna,— the  names  of  Mozart,  Haydn,  Bee- 
thoven and  Liszt.  In  the  realm  of  religion, 
from  the  view-point  of  modern  liberty,  it 
was  the  Austrian  hero,  John  Huss,  who 
was  the  Morning  Star  of  the  Eeformation. 
Though  he  was  often  spoken  of  as  a  Bohe- 
mian, it  must  be  remembered  that  Bohemia 
was  soon  to  become  an  Austrian  province. 
Many  years  before  Savonarola  made  his  plea 
for  liberty  in  the  palace  of  Lorenzo  the  Mag- 
nificent, and  rode  from  the  public  square  of 
Florence  in  his  chariot  of  flame  up  into  the 
sky,  John  Huss  stood  forth  in  the  University 
of  Prague,  and  proclaimed  the  Bible  as  hav- 
ing an  authority  above  that  of  any  man  who 
sought  to  interpret  the  Scriptures,  whether 
that  man  be  cardinal,  archbishop  or  pope. 
Promised  a  safe  conduct  by  the  Emperor 
Sigismund,  the  distinguished  scholar  made 
227 


Austria-Hungary 

his  way  to  the  city  of  Constance.  Martin 
Luther  himself  did  no  finer,  braver  deed  in 
his  sublime  utterance  than  did  John  Huss, 
who  suffered  unto  death  and  beyond  it. 
Having  tortured  the  scholar,  they  broke  his 
sword,  tore  the  spurs  from  his  heels,  tied 
him  to  the  stake,  and  lighted  the  flames,  it 
has  been  said,  with  the  safe  conduct — a 
mere  "  scrap  of  paper "  signed  by  an  em- 
peror !  And  when  only  charred  fragments 
remained,  soldiers  gathered  up  the  ashes  and 
sprinkled  them  upon  the  river ;  but  the 
stream  carried  into  all  the  world  the  news 
that  it  was  unsafe  for  any  scholar  in  Austria 
to  do  his  own  thinking,  or  to  refuse  to  sub- 
mit his  will  to  men  of  authority,  who  claimed 
the  right  to  do  the  thinking  for  the  whole 
world. 

For  nearly  eight  hundred  years  Hungary 
had  been  practically  independent,  and  had 
shown  splendid  valour  in  many  wars;  but 
about  the  beginning  of  the  Eighteenth  Cen- 
tury, between  the  Turks  and  the  Austrians 
her  territory  was  divided,  and  at  last  all 
came  under  the  Austrian  power.  Yet,  even 
so,  she  was  allowed  her  separate  Diet,  and 
from  a  patriotic  member  of  that  arose  the 
struggle  which  led  to  her  recognition  as  a 
228 


The  Coming  United  States  of  Balkany 

separate  coordinate  kingdom  in  the  Dual 
Monarchy  of  Austria-Hungary. 

The  realm  of  statesmanship  owes  a  great 
debt  to  a  noble  Hungarian  orator,  states- 
man, and  reformer,  Louis  Kossuth.  That 
was  a  dramatic  moment  in  Italy  when  a  mil- 
lion Italians  went  forth  to  meet  and  greet 
Garibaldi,  and  bring  in  the  soldier  who 
fought  for  the  New  Italy,  just  as  Mazzini 
was  the  agitator  and  Cavour  the  statesman, 
of  the  new  age.  That  was  a  wonderful 
scene  in  Washington,  when  the  Army  of  the 
Potomac  marched  through  the  streets  of  our 
national  capital,  preparatory  to  returning 
to  their  homes,  after  the  Civil  War.  And 
the  enthusiastic  reception  given  Kossuth  by 
the  people  of  New  York  was  scarcely  less 
striking.  Kossuth  was  a  lump  of  fiery  lava 
flung  up  by  the  Hungarian  revolution  of 
1848,  against  the  imperial  oppression  of 
Austria,  when  everywhere  in  Europe  revolts 
against  autocracy  were  organized. 

Member  of  the  Diet  1832-36,  an  Austrian 
political  prisoner  1837-40,  a  liberal  editor 
1841-44,  again  in  the  Diet  1847,  and  in  1848 
financial  minister  of  the  separate  Hungarian 
ministry,  Kossuth  could  no  longer  brook  the 
imperial  despotisms,  and  sounded  the  bugle 
229 


Austria-Hungary 

of  revolt.  Exiled  from  Budapest,  the  capital, 
Kossuth  fled  into  the  mountain  fastnesses, 
and  soon  there  gathered  about  him  a  group 
of  revolutionists.  Like  King  David,  he  or. 
ganized  men  who  were  discontented,  and 
turned  his  little  mob  into  a  victorious  regi- 
ment. Defeated  in  one  valley,  Kossuth  fled 
to  another.  Unable  to  assemble  the  people 
that  he  might  plead  with  them  face  to  face 
in  the  interest  of  liberty,  Kossuth  organized 
a  secret  propaganda.  One  morning  the  peo- 
ple in  ihe  capital  went  into  the  streets,  to 
find  Kossuth's  call  to  liberty.  Then  the 
government  sent  spies  to  join  themselves  to 
his  army.  Betrayed  by  men  who  were  as 
false  as  Judas,  overwhelmed  by  Austrian 
armies  aided  by  Russian  cooperation,  at 
last  Kossuth  was  defeated,  and  fled. 

He  lived  in  exile  in  Turkey,  and  in  1851-52 
came  to  this  country.  Here  the  outlaw  was 
treated  like  a  conqueror,  made  the  guest  of 
honour  in  civic  banquets,  and  became  the 
idol,  for  a  time,  in  Washington.  Unable  to 
return  to  his  native  land,  Kossuth  went  to 
London,  and  then  to  Turin,  an  exile  followed 
by  spies,  stripped  of  his  estate  and  his  prop- 
erty, and  for  nearly  forty  years  he  fought 
on,  into  extreme  old  age.  During  the  last 
•  230 


The  Coming  United  States  of  Balkany 

epoch  of  his  life,  his  garret  in  Italy  was  a 
veritable  tower  of  liberty.  Through  his 
pamphlets  and  books  he  spoke  to  all  the  peo- 
ple of  Austria  and  of  Europe.  Not  once  did 
he  lose  his  faith  that  his  cause  would  triumph. 
If  ever  a  man  stood  for  patience,  fortitude, 
and  firmness,  that  man  was  Kossuth.  Now 
his  name  has  become  a  word  by  which  to 
conjure.  He  has  his  place  among  the  endur- 
ing men  of  all  ages,  and  his  fame  shines  the 
brighter  against  the  black  background  of  in- 
tolerance, cruelty  and  despotism  furnished  by 
Austrian  emperors. 

About  twenty  years  after  the  outbreak 
of  Kossuth,  under  the  inspiration  and  skill  of 
Ferencz  Deak,  a  Hungarian  diplomat,  in  1867 
the  Dual  Monarchy  was  formed;  and  the 
Emperor  of  Austria  is  also  King  of  Hungary. 

In  this  hour  of  conflict,  when  Austria  is 
fighting  Serbia  on  the  south  and  defending 
Hungary  on  the  north  from  the  advancing 
Russians,  the  problem  of  the  aged  Emperor 
is  rendered  the  more  difficult  by  reason  of 
her  relations  to  Italy.  A  century  ago  the 
Austrian  Emperor  was  under  the  influence 
of  his  son-in-law,  Napoleon.  In  that  far-off 
time  the  conflict  between  Italy  and  Austria 
was  almost  incessant.  For  five  hundred 
231 


Austria-Hungary 

years  after  the  empire  was  established,  Italy 
had  been  not  only  the  richest  but  the  quietest 
country  in  the  world.  Then  came  the  Huns 
and  the  Vandals  to  sack  the  Italian  cities,  to 
loot  the  palaces,  destroy  the  ships,  overthrow 
the  government,  break  down  the  aqueducts 
and  kill  the  people.  It  took  a  thousand 
years  for  Italy  to  recover  her  losses,  but  in 
the  Eighteenth  Century  she  found  herself, 
and  began  to  push  the  Austrians  back  from 
the  northern  provinces,  and  once  more  to 
possess  herself  of  lands  in  Africa.  When 
the  long  struggle  was  over  the  Austrian  army 
withdrew  from  Italy  and  the  Italian  penin- 
sula, but  the  Emperor  still  held  an  Italian  prov- 
ince on  the  north,  called  the  Italian  Tyrol, 
and  by  Italians  Trentino,  with  its  splendid 
city  of  Trent,  famous  in  history,  and  Istria 
on  the  northeast,  along  the  shores  of  the 
Adriatic.  Austria  held  on  the  more  tena- 
ciously because  the  beautiful  city  of  Trieste 
and  the  Italian  province  represented  her  sole 
access  to  the  sea,  and  gave  the  people  their 
chance  for  trade  with  all  the  world.  The 
people  of  those  provinces  speak  Italian,  think 
in  Italian,  dream  about  the  glories  of  Rome, 
and  never  tire  of  singing  the  praises  of  the 
palaces  and  churches  on  the  canals  of  Venice. 
232 


The  Coming  United  States  of  Balkany 

Quiet  without,  revolt  is  always  burning 
within. 

Of  course,  after  these  many  years,  there 
are  also  Germans  in  the  Trentino  and  Slavs 
in  Istria ;  but  the  great  majority  of  the  popu- 
lations remain  Italian,  in  aspiration  and  in 
fact. 

The  Countess  Cesaresco,  in  her  book  on 
"The  Liberation  of  Italy"  (1902),  says: 
"  Istria  was  marked  out  by  Dante  as  the 
frontier  province  of  Italy.  ...  It  forms, 
with  the  Trentino,  what  is  called  Italia 
Irredenta.  Although  the  feeling  of  Italians 
for  unredeemed  Italy  is  not  what  their  feel- 
ing was  for  Lombardy  or  Yenetia,  it  is  a 
mistake  to  imagine  that  they  have  renounced 
all  aspirations  in  that  direction.  .  .  .  The 
aspiration  always  exists,  and  cannot  help 
existing.  It  has  always  been  shared  by 
patriots  of  all  denominations.  An  English 
statesman  who  called  on  Pius  IX  was  some- 
what surprised  by  the  Pope  saying  that 
Italian  unity  was  very  well,  but  it  was  a  pity 
it  did  not  include  Trento  and  Trieste." 

And    now  at  last  Austria  has  aroused  to 

the  peril  of  being  expelled  from  Italian  Tyrol 

and  her  Istrian  seaport,  and  all  possibility 

of  commerce  and  seagoing  destroyed.     Pop- 

233 


Austria-Hungary 

ular  rumour  tells  us  that  Germany's  Ex- 
Chancellor  Yon  Buelow  is  offering  bribes  to 
Italy  to  keep  out  of  the  war  and  urging 
Austria  to  give  up  some  treasure  on  the  south 
to  save  a  far  greater  treasure  that  Russia  is 
trying  to  obtain  on  the  north. 

Meanwhile  Italy  is  boiling  like  a  volcano. 
Her  two  million  men  are  like  dogs  of  war, 
straining  upon  the  leash.  No  man  knows 
when  the  thong  will  be  cut,  and  the  war 
dogs  let  loose.  Should  Italy  hurl  her  two 
million  men  upon  Southern  Austria,  at  the 
very  moment  when  Russia  is  throwing  two 
million  men  upon  Northern  Hungary,  it 
needs  no  skill  of  prophet  to  foretell  the 
crushing  defeat  that  must  overtake  the  old 
Emperor  and  the  people  of  the  Dual  Mon- 
archy. 

The  lesson  of  these  events  is  that  the  law 
of  the  moral  harvest  holds  for  cities  and 
empires  not  less  than  for  individuals.  What 
Austria  has  sown  Austria  must  reap.  Au- 
tocracy of  every  kind  makes  the  autocrat 
strong,  but  weakens  the  people  and  saps  the 
strength  of  the  millions.  That  nation  is 
great  that  welcomes  great  men.  Ecclesi- 
astical autocracy  burned  John  Huss  at  the 
stake ;  and  from  that  hour  men  in  Austria 
234 


The  Coming  United  States  of  Balkany 

have  not  dared  to  do  their  own  thinking. 
The  political  autocracy  has  been  not  less 
severe.  Intellect  can  grow  only  in  an  atmos- 
phere made  warm  and  genial  through  liberty. 
Little  by  little  the  springs  of  greatness  dried 
up  at  the  fountain-head.  Having  starved 
her  great  souls,  through  every  form  of  autoc- 
racy, the  Austrian  Emperor  found  it  easy  to 
control  weakened  men  who  did  not  dare 
assert  themselves.  The  result  was  inevi- 
table, as  in  Gladstone's  dictum,  "I  do  not 
know  where  upon  the  map  of  the  "world  you 
can  place  your  finger,  and  say,  '  Austria  has 
brought  a  blessing  to  this  spot.' '  The  Dual 
Empire  is  like  a  statue  broken  into  two 
pieces  and  held  together  by  a  band  of  iron, — 
a  band  that  may  shortly  be  broken  by  a 
hammer  in  the  hands  of  a  Czar  who  smites 
on  the  one  side,  and  the  hand  of  an  Italian 
king  smiting  on  the  other. 

There  is  a  Nemesis  that  pursues  religious 
intolerance,  political  tyranny  and  social  in- 
justice. That  Nemesis  is  now  whispering  to 
the  rulers  of  the  Dual  Monarchy,  "  He  who 
sows  to  the  flesh  shall  of  the  flesh  reap  cor- 
ruption." "  "Whatsoever  the  city  and  the 
nation  sow,  that  shall  they  reap." 

Several  years  ago  it  was  given  some  of  us 
235 


Austria-Hungary 

to  meet  an  Austrian  Ambassador,  and  to 
listen  to  his  address  at  Ellis  Island,  New 
York  harbour,  in  connection  with  the  land- 
ing of  a  ship  from  Trieste,  bringing  several 
thousand  Austrian  immigrants.  No  one  who 
heard  that  brief  address  can  ever  forget  its 
pathos.  We  were  reminded  that  Austria 
was  sending  us  more  immigrants  each  year 
than  any  other  European  nation  ;  that  these 
immigrants  were  the  picked  boys  and  girls 
out  of  the  rural  districts  of  Austria ;  that 
they  brought  Austria's  highest  average  of 
health  and  physical  strength,  of  industry  and 
of  morals.  In  substance  the  speaker  said  that 
if  these  Austrian  immigrants  had  been  phys- 
ical feeblings,  or  moral  imbeciles,  their 
leaving  their  native  land  might  rejoice  the 
people  of  Austria ;  but  instead,  these  new- 
comers were  Austria's  bravest,  strongest  and 
best.  Then  came  the  charge  by  the  repre- 
sentative of  Austria  forecasting  the  day  when 
as  American  citizens  they  would  achieve 
wealth,  with  the  suggestion  that  they  should 
return  from  time  to  time  to  visit  their  native 
land,  and  tell  the  story  of  the  American 
schoolhouse,  and  the  American  suffrage,  and 
the  American  wage  and  market-place,  of  the 
American  books  and  magazines  and  libraries, 
236 


The  Coming  United  States  of  Balkany 

and  thus  carry  the  seed  corn,  gathered  upon 
the  American  plains,  back  to  the  valleys  of 
Austria  and  there  sow  the  land  with  the 
wholesome  germs  of  American  ideals  and  in- 
stitutions. 

What  this  Austrian  gentleman  suggested 
that  these  immigrants  do,  multitudes  have 
already  done.  Having  achieved  a  competence 
here,  these  people  from  time  to  time  returned 
to  Vienna  and  Budapest,  and  in  the  streets  of 
many  a  little  Austrian  village  have  told  the 
story  of  this  Republic  and  what  its  liberties 
have  done  for  Austrian  immigrants.  Thus 
the  leaven  of  democracy  spreads.  Who 
knows  but  that  this  mighty  war  with  red-hot 
ploughshares  will  tear  up  the  soil  of  despot- 
ism and  tyranny,  and  open  the  ground  to 
the  good  seed  of  liberty,  intelligence,  and 
sound  morals.  It  is  a  singular  fact  that 
when  long  time  has  passed  the  blackest  years 
and  eras  have  in  retrospect  proved  to  be  the 
brightest.  God's  plans  are  long  plans.  With 
Him  a  thousand  years  are  as  one  day. 

The  millions  are  hungry,  and  the  Austrian 
valley  is  a  bread-pan,  and  Providence  is 
kneading  a  large  loaf,  and  fire  is  burning  out 
the  acids,  and  the  bread  will  come  forth 
edible,  and  full  of  nutrition.  Upheavals, 
237 


Austria-Hungary 

losses,  destructions  there  must  be,  but  we  can 
work  and  hope  if  only  we  can  believe  that 
the  destroying  is  for  the  sake  of  saving  ;  if 
only  the  twilight  is  not  the  evening  twilight 
leading  into  the  dark,  but  the  morning  twi- 
light opening  into  a  glorious  noon  of  peace 
and  intelligence,  righteousness  and  prosperity, 
for  the  millions  of  people  who  live  in  the 
Dual  Empire. 

BESOURCES  OF  AUSTRIA-HUNGARY,  1913  * 
Area  in  square  miles,  261,491. 
Population,  52,000,000. 
Wealth,  $55,000,000,000. 
National  debt,  $2,598,156,145. 
Annual  revenue  :  Austria,     $653,641,985. 
Hungary,  $431,835,215. 
Army  budget  (1913-14),  $124,960,000. 
Navy  budget  (1912-13),  $  30,032,755. 
Army  :  Standing,     424,000  )  9  99n  mn 
Eeserves,  1,796,000  }  2>220>000- 

1  Estimates  chiefly  from  the  War  Gazetteer,  N.  Y.  Even- 
ing Post  Company,  copyright. 


238 


X 

The  Verdict  of  the  American  People 

Upon 
Militarism  and  Autocracy 


The  Kaiser  on  Militarism 
I  would  direct  your  gaze  to  my  grandfather, 
who  stands  before  the  eyes  of  all  of  you,  the  glo- 
rious war  lord,  worthy  of  all  honour  —  a  spectacle 
more  beautiful  than  any  other.  ...  So  are  we 
bound  together  —  I  and  the  army  —  so  are  we  born 
for  one  another,  and  so  shall  we  hold  together 
indissolubly,  whether,  as  God  wills,  we  are  to 
have  peace  or  storm. 

To  the  Army  on  the  Day  of  his  Accession,  June 
15,  2888. 

The  only  pillar  on  which  the  empire  rested 
was  the  army.  So  it  is  to-day. 

Speech  at  Dedication  of  Regimental  Flags,  Berlin, 
Oct.  18,  1894 

The  Kaiser  on  Autocracy 

It  is  now  your  task  to  stand  faithfully  by  me 

and  to  defend  our  highest  possessions,  whether 

against  enemies  from  without  or  from  within,  and 

to  obey  when  I  command  and  never  to  forsake  me. 

Administering  the  Oath  to  Recruits,  Berlin,  Nov. 

18, 


In  the  next  ten  years,  faithfully  bound  together, 
let  us  seek  further  the  unconditional  fulfillment  of 
our  duty  in  old  and  unremitting  labour,  and  may 
the  main  supports  of  our  army  remain  forever  in- 
tact !  They  are  courage,  sense  of  honour,  and 
unconditional,  iron,  blind  obedience. 

7i>  the  Regiments  of  the  Bodyguard,  Potsdam,  June 
16,  i8g8. 

From  "  The  German  Emperor,  as  Shown  in  His 
Public  Utterances" 

PROF.  CHRISTIAN  GAUSS. 


THE  VERDICT  OF  THE  AMERICAN 

PEOPLE  UPON  MILITARISM 

AND  AUTOCRACY 

NEARLY  five  months  have  now  passed 
by  since  the  German  army  invaded 
Belgium  and  France.  These  one  hundred 
and  forty  days  have  been  packed  with  thrill- 
ing and  momentous  events, — not  the  least 
important  being  the  publication  of  diplo- 
matic papers  exchanged  between  the  Euro- 
pean Governments  immediately  before  the 
outbreak  of  war.  While  from  their  safe 
vantage  ground  the  American  people  have 
surveyed  the  scene,  an  old  system  of  balanced 
Powers  has  crumbled  under  our  very  eyes. 
Europe  is  a  loom  on  whose  earthen  framework 
tremendous  forces  like  Frederick  the  Great, 
Napoleon  and  Bismarck  once  wove  the 
texture  of  European  civilization.  Now,  the 
demon  of  war  has,  with  hot  knife,  shorn 
away  the  texture,  and  a  modern  czar  and 
kaiser,  king  and  president,  with  generals  and 
241 


Verdict  of  the  American  People 

admirals,  are  weaving  the  warp  and  woof  of 
a  new  world. 

One  hundred  years  ago  the  elements  that 
bred  wars  were  political  forces ;  to-day,  the 
collision  between  nations  is  born  of  economic 
interests.  The  Twentieth  Century  influences 
are  chiefly  the  force  of  wealth  and  the  power 
of  public  opinion.  These  are  the  giant 
steeds,  though  the  reins  of  the  horses  may 
be  in  the  hands  of  kings  and  kaisers.  In 
Napoleon's  day  antagonism  grew  out  of  the 
natural  hatred  between  autocracy  and  de- 
mocracy, between  German  imperialism  and 
French  radicalism.  To-day,  Germany  is  not 
even  interested  in  France's  republican  form 
of  government,  nor  is  France  concerned  with 
Germany's  imperial  autocracy.  But  all 
Europe  is  intensely  concerned  with  the 
question  of  economic  supremacy  or  finan- 
cial subordination. 

Ever  since  Oliver  Cromwell's  day  England 
has  been  the  mistress  of  the  seas,  and  Ger- 
many, having  grown  wondrously  in  pro- 
ductiveness and  oversea  commerce,  believes 
that  she  has  a  right  to  supplant  England  in 
this  naval  leadership.  France  has  long  been 
the  banker  of  Europe,  and  Germany  with 
her  new  wealth  covets  financial  leadership. 
242 


Upon  Militarism  and  Autocracy 

From  whence  come  wars  ?    Come  they  not 
from  men's  lusts  ? 

If  the  history  of  great  wars  tells  us  axiy- 
thing,  it  tells  us  that  the  first  qualification 
of  the  statesman  and  diplomat  is  an  intuitive 
knowledge  of  a  future  that  is  the  certain 
outcome  of  the  present.  Now  that  long 
time  has  passed,  it  is  quite  certain  that 
neither  Napoleon  nor  Bismarck  nor  William 
the  Second  understood  the  future.  It  is  a 
proverb  that  yesterday  is  a  seed,  to-day  the 
stalk  and  to-morrow  is  the  full  corn  in  the 
ear.  Napoleon  was  a  practical  man,  but  he 
could  not  see  the  shock  in  the  seed.  When 
Napoleon  said,  "  One  hundred  years  from 
now  Europe  will  be  all  republican  or  all 
Cossack " — Napoleon  was  quite  wrong. 
Forty  years  ago  Bismarck  said  that  he 
had  reduced  France  to  the  level  of  a 
fourth-class  nation,  and  that  henceforth 
France  did  not  count ;  while  as  for  the 
Balkan  States,  "  the  whole  Eastern  question 
is  not  worth  the  bones  of  a  Pomeranian 
grenadier."  But  Bismarck  was  quite  wrong. 
The  present  Kaiser  has  no  imagination.  A 
man  of  any  prevision  of  the  future  might 
have  foreseen  that  the  Twentieth  Century 
man  is  so  incensed  by  hostile  trespass  upon 
243 


Verdict  of  the  American  People 

his  property,  that  Belgium  would  have  re- 
sisted encroachment,  and  so  cost  Germany 
the  best  three  weeks  of  the  entire  war  upon 
which  she  so  masterfully  entered. 

There  has  been  small  foresight  on  the 
part  of  the  makers  of  this  war,  except  as 
to  their  own  preparedness  for  a  mighty 
struggle.  Years  ago,  when  the  Austrian 
Emperor  visited  Innsbruck,  the  Burgomas- 
ter ordered  foresters  to  go  up  on  the  moun- 
tainsides and  cut  certain  swaths  of  brush. 
At  the  moment,  the  man  with  his  axe  did 
not  know  what  he  was  doing,  but  when  the 
night  fell,  and  the  torch  was  lifted  on  the 
boughs,  the  people  in  the  city  below  read 
these  words  written  in  letters  of  fire,  "  Wel- 
come to  our  Emperor."  To-day  the  demon 
of  war  has  been  writing  with  blazing  letters 
certain  lessons  upon  the  hills  and  valleys  of 
Europe,  and  fortunate  is  he  who  can  read 
the  writing  and  interpret  aright  the  lessons 
of  the  times. 

I.  The  people  of  this  American  Republic 
now  realize  for  the  first  time  what  are  the  in- 
evitable fruits  of  imperialism  and  militarism. 
One  of  the  perils  of  America's  distance  from 
the  scenes  of  autocracy  is  that  many  of  our 
people  have  come  to  think  that  the  forms  of 
244 


Upon  Militarism  and  Autocracy 

our  government  are  of  little  importance. 
We  hear  it  said  that  climate  determines 
government,  and  that  one  nation  likes  autoc- 
racy and  another  limited  monarchy,  that  we 
like  democracy  and  self-government,  and 
that  people  are  about  as  happy  under  one 
form  of  control  as  another.  This  miscon- 
ception is  based  upon  a  failure  to  understand 
foreign  imperialism.  Superficially,  the  fruits 
of  a  modern,  intelligent  autocracy  are  effi- 
ciency, industrial  wealth  and  military 
power.  But  now,  after  nearly  five  months 
of  practical  exposition,  our  people  understand 
thoroughly  the  other  side  of  imperialism. 
The  six  million  German-Americans  living 
in  this  country,  with  their  high  type  of 
character — millions  who  have  left  their 
native  land  to  escape  service  in  the  army, 
the  burdens  of  taxation  involved  in  milita- 
rism, and  the  law  of  lese  majeste — should 
have  opened  our  eyes  long  ago. 

During  the  past  five  years  I  have  lectured 
in  more  than  one  hundred  cities  on  "  The 
New  Germany,"  and  the  lessons  derived 
from  her  industrial  efficiency,  with  the  ap- 
plication of  science  to  the  production  of 
wealth,  but  I  have  not  until  recently  appre- 
ciated fully  the  far-off  harvest  of  militarism. 
245 


Verdict  of  the  American  People 

Lest  an  American  overstate  the  meaning 
of  militarism,  let  me  condense  the  German 
Treitschke's  view.  He  holds  that  the  nation 
should  be  looked  upon  as  a  vast  military 
engine;  that  its  ruler  should  be  the  com- 
mander of  the  army ;  that  his  cabinet  should 
be  under  generals ;  that  the  whole  nation 
should  march  with  the  concentered  aim  of 
an  armed  regiment ;  that  the  real  "  sin 
against  the  Holy  Ghost "  was  the  sin  of 
military  impotence;  that  such  an  army 
should  take  all  it  wants  and  the  territory  it 
needs  and  explain  afterwards.  Manufac- 
turers are  in  his  view  essentially  inventors 
of  cannons  and  guns  and  dreadnoughts, 
incidentally  self-supporting  men.  Bankers 
exist  to  finance  the  army,  and  incidentally 
to  make  money.  Physicians  are  equipped 
to  heal  the  wounded  soldiers.  Gymnasiums 
are  founded  to  train  soldiers.  "Women  are 
here  to  breed  soldiers,  and  militarism  is  the 
path  that  will  bring  Germany  to  her  place 
in  the  sun.  The  youth  is  first  of  all  to  be  a 
soldier,  and,  incidentally,  to  be  a  man. 

No  one  has  indicted  Germany's  militarism 

in  stronger  language  than  that  distinguished 

German-American,  Carl  Schurz.     In  words 

that  literally  burn,  the  great  statesman  ex- 

246 


Upon  Militarism  and  Autocracy 

pressed  his  hatred  of  the  imperialism  and 
militarism  against  which  he  helped  to 
organize  a  revolution  that  led  to  his  flight 
to  this  country.  Of  late,  Americans  have 
been  asking  themselves  certain  questions, 
among  them  the  following : 

What  will  be  the  result  if  Germany  is 
allowed  to  seize  any  smaller  state  whose 
territory  and  property  she  covets?  Is  all 
Europe  to  become  an  armed  camp  ?  What 
is  the  meaning  of  the  German  professor's 
article  in  the  North  American  Review, 
written  two  or  three  years  ago,  in  which 
he  says  that  once  Germany  is  victorious  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  will  go  and  the  United 
States  will  receive  the  "  thrashing  she  so 
richly  deserves "  ?  Must  we  then  also  go 
over  to  the  military  ideal?  If  Germany 
supports  8,000,000  soldiers  out  of  66,000,000 
people  must  we  withdraw  from  industry 
12,000,000  men  for  at  least  two  or  three  of 
the  best  years  of  their  young  life  ?  Must  we 
start  in  on  a  programme  of  ten  dreadnoughts 
a  year  instead  of  building  ten  colleges  and 
universities  for  the  same  sum  of  money  ? 

In  this  fashion,  of  late,  have  Americans 
who  love  their  country  been  searching  their 
own  hearts.  Merchants  hitherto  busied  with 
247 


Verdict  of  the  American  People 

commerce  are  asking  themselves  whither 
this  country  is  drifting.  Is  Germany  to 
compel  us  to  become  a  vast  military  ma- 
chine? This  military  question  is  a  subject 
of  discussion  on  the  street  cars  and  in  the 
stores,  at  the  dining-room  table.  No  articles 
in  paper  and  magazine  are  so  eagerly  read 
and  analyzed  as  those  dealing  with  the 
subject. 

Now  the  American  ideal  is  not  a  military 
machine,  but  a  high  quality  of  manhood. 
To  make  men  free,  with  the  gift  of  self- 
expression  ;  to  make  men  wise  through  the 
public  school  and  the  free  press ;  to  make 
men  self-sufficing  and  happy  in  their  homes, 
through  freedom  of  industrial  contract ;  to 
make  men  sound  in  their  manhood  through 
religious  liberty  for  Jew  and  Gentile,  Catho- 
lic and  Protestant — these  are  our  national 
ideals.  America  stands  at  the  other  pole  of 
the  universe  from  imperialism  and  milita- 
rism. So  far  from  our  being  willing  to  desert 
the  political  faith  of  the  fathers,  this  war 
has  confirmed  our  confidence  in  self-govern- 
ment. Liberty  to  grow,  freedom  to  climb 
as  high  as  industry  and  ability  will  permit, 
liberty  to  analyze  and  discuss  the  views  of 
President,  Congress,  Governor — these  are 
248 


Upon  Militarism  and  Autocracy 

our  rights.  In  a  military  autocracy  there 
can  be  no  liberty  of  the  printing-press.  If  a 
man  criticizes  the  Kaiser,  he  goes  to  jail.  In 
this  Kepublic,  if  Horace  Greeley  criticizes 
Abraham  Lincoln,  Abraham  Lincoln  does 
not  send  the  great  editor  to  jail,  but  writes 
the  latter,  "  My  paramount  object  is  to  save 
the  Union,"  and  vindicates  himself  at  the  bar 
of  the  nation.  An  American  editor  or  citizen 
would  choke  to  death  in  Germany.  He  could 
not  breathe  because  of  the  mephitic  gases  of 
imperialism  and  militarism.  For  a  long  time 
some  of  us  did  not  realize  what  was  involved, 
but  the  events  of  the  past  few  months  in 
Europe  have  compelled  us  to  realize  the 
difference  between  the  fruits  of  democratic 
self-government  and  the  fruits  of  military 
imperialism. 

II.  The  last  five  months,  too,  have  brought 
to  American  citizens  a  new  realization  as  to 
the  rights  and  liberties  of  small  states.  In 
this  Republic,  the  sin  of  trespass  is  one  of 
the  blackest  of  sins.  Here  we  hold  to  the 
sanctity  of  property.  A  man's  home  is  his 
castle,  a  citadel  that  cannot  be  invaded  even 
by  the  power  of  the  State.  So  deep  is  the 
American  hatred  of  trespass  against  property 
rights  that  imperialism  finds  it  impossible  to 
249 


Verdict  of  the  American  People 

understand  this.  Here  the  individual  is  a 
king  among  kings  in  his  native  right,  and 
takes  out  an  injunction  against  the  city  that 
wishes  to  trespass  upon  his  property.  This 
antagonism  manifests  itself  in  the  laws  that 
safeguard  the  small  shopkeeper  against  the 
big  firm,  and  the  small  manufacturer  against 
any  company  with  its  billion  dollars  of 
capital. 

This  antagonism  to  the  sin  of  trespass  has 
lent  a  peculiar  sanctity  to  treaties  between 
Canada  and  the  United  States.  We  have  one 
hundred  millions  of  people,  and  Canada  nine 
millions.  We  need  many  things  that  Canada 
has,  but  it  is  intellectually  unthinkable  that 
"  we  should  take  what  we  want  and  explain 
afterwards,"  or  that  we  should  violate  our 
peaceful  treaty  with  Great  Britain.  The 
frontier  line  between  us  is  three  thousand 
miles  long,  but  there  is  not  a  fort  from  Maine 
to  Yictoria.  If  we  adopted  Germany's  posi- 
tion we  would  have  to  build  one  thousand 
forts,  withdraw  two  million  young  men  from 
the  farm,  factory,  store  and  bank,  and  load 
the  working  people  with  taxes  to  support 
them  ;  and  Canada  would  have  to  follow  our 
example.  In  a  free  land,  and  in  God's  world, 
there  should  be  a  place  for  the  poor  man  and 
250 


Upon  Militarism  and  Autocracy 

for  the  small  nation, — since  Canada,  with  a 
magnificent  territory,  has  but  begun  her 
manning  of  it  with  her  energetic  population. 
In  the  olden  time,  there  was  a  king  who 
had  herds  and  flocks,  and  a  poor  man  who 
had  one  pet  lamb.  It  came  to  pass  that  a 
stranger  claimed  the  right  of  hospitality  at 
the  palace,  and  the  king  sent  out  and  took  the 
poor  man's  one  lamb  and  gave  it  for  food  to 
the  stranger.  But  the  prophet  showed  the 
king  his  meanness,  and  he  was  ashamed. 
And,  soon  or  late,  the  time  will  come  when 
history  will  tell  the  story  of  Germany's  tak- 
ing little  Belgium,  and  Conscience,  like  the 
prophet,  will  indict  the  militarism  that  seized 
the  one  lamb  that  belonged  to  the  poor  man. 
That  episode  is  not  closed.  The  German  rep- 
resentative who  says  that  Belgium  is  a  part 
of  Germany  may  be  right  in  terms  of  future 
war  and  government,  but  the  incident  has 
only  begun  in  the  memory  of  the  soldiers 
who  never  can  forget  that  Germany  first 
broke  their  sacred  treaty,  and  then,  when  the 
Belgian  defended  his  home  as  his  castle, 
butchered  the  man,  who  died  with  that  treaty 
in  his  hand.  Why,  all  over  this  land 
teachers,  fathers,  editors,  authors,  have  found 
it  necessary  to  say  to  the  young  men  and 
251 


Verdict  of  the  American  People 

women  of  the  Republic,  "  Do  not  sign  your 
name  to  an  obligation  unless  you  intend  to 
keep  it."  "  Keep  your  faith.  Remember 
that  your  word  given  should  be  as  good  as 
your  bond."  "  Swear  to  your  own  hurt,  and 
change  not."  All  this  is  inevitable,  as  the 
result  of  Germany's  trespass  upon  the  prop- 
erty and  the  homes  of  Belgium. 

In  some  European  lands,  the  State  is 
everything  and  the  individual  nothing.  In 
this  Republic  the  individual  is  first,  and  the 
State  is  here  to  safeguard  his  rights,  and  see 
to  it  that  no  one  trespasses  upon  his  property. 
The  time  will  come  when  the  nation  that 
breaks  its  treaties  and  sows  to  the  wind  shall 
of  that  wind  reap  the  whirlwind.  It  is  an 
awful  thing  for  a  nation  to  make  it  inevitable 
that  hereafter  when  that  country  negotiates  a 
treaty  with  other  people  their  representatives 
shall  say :  "  Before  we  sign  this  treaty  with 
you,  we  wish  to  ask  one  question  :  If  later  it 
is  to  your  interest  to  break  this  treaty,  is  the 
document  to  be  sneered  at  as  a  scrap  of 
paper  ?  Or  does  this  treaty  mean  the  faith 
of  a  nation  that  will  die  rather  than  break  its 
word,  given  before  the  tribunal  of  civilized 
States  ?  " 

III.  This  great  war  and  one  or  two  of 
252 


Upon  Militarism  and  Autocracy 

the  leaders  thereof  have  finally  killed  the  old 
tribal  idea  of  God.  In  the  Twentieth  Cen- 
tury it  seems  almost  ludicrous  to  find  that  the 
conception  of  the  ancient  Hebrews  is  still 
held  by  some  rulers.  Be  the  reasons  what 
they  may,  of  late  there  has  been  a  strange 
recrudescence  of  the  tribal  God  idea.  This 
is  the  Twentieth  Century,  not  the  Third ! 
God  is  the  God  of  the  whole  earth,  a  dis- 
interested God,  a  God  who  makes  His  sun  to 
shine  and  His  rain  to  fall  upon  all  His  chil- 
dren, without  regard  to  race  or  clime  or 
colour !  Why,  all  this  assumption  —  not 
prayer  for  Divine  help,  but  assumption  that 
the  Supreme  Being  of  the  universe  is  a  part- 
ner in  the  savage  deeds  of  a  single  nation — 
is  as  artless  as  the  way  the  old  Hebrew  peas- 
ant called  on  Jehovah  to  blast  his  enemy's 
field,  and  drown  his  children  with  floods,  and 
smite  his  herds  with  the  plague.  No:  the 
tribal  idea  of  God  belongs  with  the  ox-cart, 
the  medicine  man,  the  cave-dweller.  This  is 
an  era  of  science.  "Whatever  is  true  is  uni- 
versal, not  racial.  If  the  heart  beats  and  the 
blood  circulates  in  a  German  soldier's  veins, 
the  blood  also  flows  in  the  veins  of  the  peo- 
ple of  England  and  France.  If  the  earth 
goes  around  the  sun  in  Berlin,  the  earth  goes 
253 


Verdict  of  the  American  People 

around  the  sun  in  Petrograd  and  Edinburgh. 
If  there  are  seven  rays  in  the  sunbeam,  then 
the  discussion  is  closed,  and  it  is  a  universal 
fact.  And  if  Jesus  was  right  when  He  said, 
"  God  is  our  Father,  and  all  the  races  are  our 
brothers,  and  the  world  has  been  fitted  up  by 
God  as  an  Eden  garden  for  His  children," 
then  no  man  or  ruler  should  ever  adopt  the 
view  of  the  peasant  and  the  cave-man,  and 
try  to  make  the  Eternal  God  a  tribal  deity. 
The  unconscious  humour  in  the  statements  of 
one  or  two  men  as  to  their  tribal  God  idea 
has  added  to  the  gayety  of  nations ;  and 
when  any  view  is  laughed  at,  it  is  doomed. 
From  the  very  moment  when  the  doctrine  of 
election,  that  made  God  love  a  few  aristocrats 
and  pass  the  non-elect  by,  became  a  matter 
of  joke  in  the  comic  papers,  that  theory  was 
dead.  Not  otherwise  is  it  with  this  idea  of  a 
tribal  God.  "When  Barry  Paine  begins  to  say, 

Led  by  William,  as  you  tell, 
God  has  done  extremely  well, 

the  tribal  idea  has  been  relegated  to  the 
theological  scrap-heap.  The  peasant's  view 
must  go.  In  this  age  men  must  adore  the 
God  of  all  countries  and  of  the  universe. 
God  is  a  sun  who  shines  for  the  poor  man's 
254 


Upon  Militarism  and  Autocracy 

hut  as  truly  as  for  the  rich  man's  palace. 
The  Judge  of  all  the  earth  is  also  the  Father 
of  all  the  races,  and  He  will  do  men  good 
and  not  evil. 

IV.  In  view  of  the  events  of  the  last  few 
months,  all  Americans  now  realize,  as  never 
before,  the  futility  of  war  as  a  means  of  set- 
tling disputes.  Indeed,  it  may  be  doubted 
whether  any  war  has  ever  setted  any  ques- 
tion. Defeat  did  not  convince  the  South 
that  they  were  wrong  in  their  idea  of  State 
sovereignty  and  slavery.  If  the  South  has 
given  up  both  to-day  it  is  because  time,  events 
and  social  progress  have  changed  their  view, 
not  because  the  sword  convinced  them. 
Yon  Moltke's  victory  at  Sedan  and  Bismarck's 
triumph  at  Versailles  did  not  settle  the 
dispute  with  France.  To  keep  one  billion 
dollars  of  indemnity  Germany  must  have 
spent  five  billions  on  forts  and  armies  and  the 
government  of  Alsace  and  Lorraine.  Ger- 
many's apparent  victory  simply  put  Ger- 
many's trouble  with  France  out  at  compound 
interest,  and  left  the  next  generation  of  Ger- 
mans to  pay  several  billions  of  dollars  of 
accrued  debt  through  hatred. 

Plainly,  it  is  folly  not  to  reconstitute  the 
map  of  Europe.     The  frontier  lines  of  the 
255 


Verdict  of  the  American  People 

geographer  should  coincide  as  nearly  as  may 
be  with  the  racial  lines,  and  certainly,  in 
some  form,  should  be  submitted  for  judg- 
ment to  "  the  consent  of  the  governed."  The 
German  race  with  their  peculiar  ideals  ought 
not  to  try  to  govern  the  French  race.  It  is 
an  expensive  experiment.  It  is  an  impossible 
attempt.  The  plan  is  doomed  to  failure  in 
advance.  And  when  the  day  of  payment 
comes,  it  is  quite  certain  that  the  questions 
at  issue  will  not  have  been  settled  by 
regiments  of  soldiers.  They  must  finally  be 
settled  by  an  appeal  to  some  court  of 
arbitration  that  will  do  justice  and  love 
mercy ;  that  will  insist  upon  the  rights  of 
the  smaller  States  and  make  it  impossible 
for  the  great  ones  of  the  earth  to  trespass 
upon  the  property  and  the  liberties  of  brave 
little  peoples. 

V.  Out  of  the  smoke  of  battle  another  les- 
son is  written  for  all  who  have  eyes  to  read.  In 
view  of  the  mistakes  made  by  men  who  have 
absolute  power,  it  is  now  certain  that  ex- 
emption from  criticism  is  a  bad  thing  for  any 
man  and  that  endless  adoration  destroys  the 
ruler's  power  to  think  in  straight  lines. 
There  never  lived  a  man  who  was  not  injured 
by  perpetual  compliments.  Strong  men  are 
256 


Upon  Militarism  and  Autocracy 

willing  to  pay  cash  for  criticism.  Flattery 
will  conceal  weakness,  and  they  know  that 
pitiless  criticism  will  expose  the  danger  and 
perhaps  save  them.  No  man  is  so  unfortunate 
as  the  man  who  is  put  on  a  throne  lifted  up 
beyond  the  reach  of  plain  truth-telling.  It 
is  doubtful  if  so  many  blunders  were  ever 
made  by  statesmen  and  diplomats  as  were 
made  at  the  beginning  of  this  war.  Just 
think  of  one  government  being  wrong  in  so 
many  particulars  at  the  same  time !  Lincoln 
said,  "  You  can't  fool  all  of  the  people  all  of 
the  time."  Yes,  that  may  be  true  in  a  re- 
public, but  you  certainly  can  fool  all  the 
diplomats  and  generals  of  an  empire,  and 
do  it  all  the  time  during  July  and  August, 
in  any  event. 

Call  the  roll  of  Germany's  diplomatic 
blunders,  and  the  list  is  long.  First,  England 
will  be  neutral,  for  Ireland  will  keep  her  from 
going  to  war.  Second,  Italy  will  be  our 
ally.  Third,  Belgium  will  be  neutral  and 
allow  us  to  trespass  upon  her  property  and 
her  homes.  Fourth,  France  is  unprepared 
and  Paris  will  fail  within  three  weeks. 
Fifth,  an  alliance  with  Turkey,  despite  her 
polygamy,  and  butcheries  in  Armenia,  and 
the  civilized  world's  hatred  for  her  cruel  tieSj 
257 


Verdict  of  the  American  People 

will  help  us.  Sixth,  Japan  will  hold  Kussia  in 
check.  Seventh,  the  Czar  will  be  attacked  by 
Bulgaria,  Italy  and  China.  It  seems  in- 
credible that  any  ruler  and  group  of  dip- 
lomats could  be  so  entirely  wrong  all  the 
time,  on  every  question,  for  a  whole  summer! 
Was  there  no  man  as  diplomat  who  had  the 
wisdom  to  see  that  an  attack  upon  England 
would  end  the  disputes  in  Ireland  and  bind 
together  Canada,  Australia,  New  Zealand, 
South  Africa,  India,  into  a  new  United  States 
of  Great  Britain  '?  Was  there  no  statesman 
with  enough  prevision  of  the  future,  and 
with  courage  to  tell  the  people  in  Wilhelm- 
strasse  that  the  certain  result  would  be  the 
United  States  of  Balkany,  to  stand  hence- 
forth as  a  barrier  between  Germany  and  the 
Bosphorus  ?  Was  there  no  one  to  remind 
Berlin  that  Italy  had  just  completed  a  war 
with  Turkey  and  that  any  treaty  with  Turkey 
meant  inevitably  the  breaking  of  friendship 
with  Italy  ?  Alas  for  the  man  who  is  ele- 
vated to  a  throne,  in  whose  presence  men 
burn  incense,  pour  forth  flattery,  that  he  may 
breathe  its  perfume,  and  sing  songs  of  praise 
that  he  may  slumber  ! 

In  concluding  our  brief  survey  of  the  na- 
tions and  the  stake  each  country  has  in  the 
258 


Upon  Militarism  and  Autocracy 

war,  there  is  one  reflection  that  must  be  ob- 
vious to  all  thinking  men.  This  little  fire  of 
last  August  has  become  a  world  conflagra- 
tion. The  nation  that  first  sent  out  her 
armies  was  Germany.  There  is  a  high- water 
mark  of  battle  in  every  war,  and  after  that, 
the  invading  waves  begin  their  retreat.  The 
high-water  mark  of  Napoleon's  was  Auster- 
litz,  and  the  waves  ebbed  away  at  Waterloo. 
The  high-water  mark  of  our  Civil  War  was 
Gettysburg,  and  the  tide  ebbed  out  at  Appo- 
mattox.  Belgium's  defence  cost  Germany 
the  three  most  important  weeks  of  the  war, 
and  her  high- water  mark  was  when  she  was 
within  twenty  miles  of  Paris.  Occasional 
eddies  and  returns  of  the  tide  there  may  be, 
but  nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  there 
are  ten  nations  and  six  hundred  millions 
of  men  that  had  rather  die  than  have  Ger- 
man militarism  imposed  upon  themselves 
and  their  children.  Americans,  who  admire 
German  efficiency,  the  German  people,  and 
want  to  see  German  literature,  art  and  sci- 
ence preserved,  and  feel  an  immeasurable 
debt  to  Martin  Luther — as  Americans  gener- 
ally do — certainly  do  not  want  Germany 
destroyed. 

But  Germany  will  not  listen  to  England, 
259 


Verdict  of  the  American  People 

nor  France,  nor  even  to  America.  There 
is  only  one  voice  that  can  reach  Germany- 
it  is  the  voice  of  the  German- Americans  in 
this  country.  They  are  six  million  strong. 
They  are  among  the  most  honoured  and 
esteemed  folk  in  American  life.  Their 
achievements  are  beyond  all  praise.  The 
Germans  have  built  Milwaukee  and  have 
done  much  for  St.  Louis.  The  Germans 
have  been  great  forces  in  Cincinnati  and 
Chicago  and  New  York.  What  wealth 
among  their  bankers!  What  prosperity 
among  German  manufacturers!  What  so- 
lidity of  manhood  in  these  German  Luther- 
ans !  Was  there  ever  a  finer  body  of  farm- 
ing folk  than  the  German  landowners  of 
the  Middle  West  ?  This  Eepublic  owes  the 
German- American  a  great  debt  as  to  liberty 
through  men  like  Carl  Schurz.  Many  of 
these  German- Americans  own  great  estates 
and  have  investments  in  the  Fatherland. 
To-day  these  six  million  German- Americans 
have  the  centre  of  the  world's  stage.  This 
war  is  a  conflagration  that  will  in  time  burn 
itself  out.  But  if  the  six  million  German- 
Americans  organized  themselves  and  held 
meetings  of  protest  in  New  York  and  Brook- 
lyn and  Chicago  and  Milwaukee,  in  St.  Louis 
260 


Upon  Militarism  and  Autocracy 

and  Cincinnati ;  if  German- American  editors 
and  bankers  and  business  men  united  their 
voice — as  Americans,  for  peace,  and  not  as 
Germans,  for  war — they  would  be  heard. 

Do  they  not  owe  something  to  this  Re- 
public ?  And  having  come  to  such  a  crisis 
as  this,  should  they  not  use  their  influence 
with  the  Fatherland  ?  Having  escaped  con- 
scription and  years  of  military  service,  with 
heavy  taxation,  and  enjoyed  the  liberty  of 
the  press;  having  become  convinced  that 
militarism  does  not  promote  the  prosperity 
and  manhood  of  the  people,  why  should  they 
not  as  one  man  ask  the  Fatherland  now  to 
present  its  cause  to  arbitrators?  To  no 
body  of  American  citizens  has  there  ever 
come  a  more  strategic  opportunity,  or  a  re- 
sponsibility so  heavy.  Some  of  the  most 
thoughtful  men  in  this  land  believe  that  the 
destiny  of  Germany  rests  now  largely  with 
the  leaders  of  the  six  million  German- Ameri- 
cans in  our  country. 

But  no  matter  what  the  present  course  of 
events,  let  no  man  think  that  God  and  jus- 
tice are  not  fully  equal  to  this  emergency. 
The  great  vine  of  Liberty  was  planted  by 
Divine  Hands  in  the  Eden  garden.  Just 
now  the  storm  roars  through  the  branches  of 
261 


Verdict  of  the  American  People 

the  tree  of  life.  But  the  storm  will  die  out. 
Better  days  are  coming.  It  may  be  that 
the  convulsion  of  war  will  do  for  Europe 
what  the  earthquake  did  for  the  rude  folks  of 
Greece — cracked  the  solid  rock  and  exposed 
the  silver  veins  that  gave  the  wealth  with 
which  rude  men  built  Athens,  with  its  art, 
its  literature,  its  law  and  its  liberty.  Take 
no  counsel  of  crouching  fear ;  God  is  abroad 
in  the  world.  With  Him  a  thousand  years 
are  as  one  day.  When  a  long  time  has  passed 
let  us  believe  that  self-government  will  be 
found  to  be  the  most  stable  form  of  govern- 
ment, and  that  these  golden  words,  Liberty, 
Opportunity,  Intelligence  and  Integrity  will 
be  the  watchwords  not  only  of  this  Republic, 
but  of  all  the  nations  of  the  earth. 


262 


Index 


ABDUL  HAMID,  158 

Adams,  Samuel,  113 

Adriatic  Sea,  22,  24,  172 

Ajax  and  the  lightning,  105 

Alexander  II.,  of  Russia, 
126,  127 

Alexandria,  148 

Alleghanies,  194 

Alsace  and  Lorraine,  47,  170 

Alva,  Duke  of,  104,  107- 
113,  204,  205 

Amazon  River,  194 

American,  Civil  War,  13 ; 
government  for  protection 
of  life,  property,  and  edu- 
cation, not  beauty,  58-59 ; 
students  of  art  in  Paris, 
66;  indebtedness  to 
France,  68  ;  capitalists  in 
Mexico,  94 ;  workmen 
and  this  war,  94 

"  American  in  Holland, 
The,"  quoted,  21 1; 

Amsterdam,  193,  202,  204 

Anatole  France,  critic,  64 

Antwerp,  106-113 

Anzeiger  on  Belgium,  39 

Appomattox,  46 

Arabia,  146 

Arc  de  Triomphe,  Paris,  57 

"  Areopagitica,"  quoted, 
72 

Arkansas,  194 

Armenian  Church,  130 

Arnold  of  Rugby,  168 

Aquitani,  104 

Asia  Minor,  145,  151,  166 


Augustine,  167 

Australia,  77,  79 

Austria,  cause  for  war,  15 ; 
German  provinces  of,  23 

Austria-Hungary.drawn  into 
Triple  Alliance  by  Bis- 
marck (1882),  with  Ger- 
many began  war  of  1914 
attacking  Serbia,  172; 
present  dangers  to,  174 ; 
and  the  Coming  United 
States  of  Balkany,  Chap- 
ter IX,  217  ;  threatened 
by  Balkan  revolution 
219;  Dual  Monarchy  of, 
strength  and  weakness, 
220 ;  remainder  of  Holy 
Roman  Empire,  221; 
Maria  Theresa,  224-226; 
musicians,  reformers,  227, 
228  ;  relations  with  Hun- 
gary, 228-231  ;  retained 
Italian  provinces,  233 ; 
Italian  people  hot  to  in- 
tervene in  war,  233,  234  ; 
Austrian  intolerance,  235 ; 
immigrants  from,  in 
America,  236  ;  resources 
of,  238 

BABYLON,  168 

Bacon,  Francis,  74 

Bagdad,  24 

Balkan  Countries,  24  ;  rev- 
olution against  Turkey, 
217-219  ;  plans  for  feder- 
ation threatened  to  bar 


263 


Index 


Austria      and     Germany 

from  East,  119 
Balkany,  United   States    of, 

217-220 
Barker,  J.  Ellis,  quoted,  12, 

25-  35-  41 

Beethoven,  12,  227 

Beggars  of  the  Sea,  206 

Belgium,  fortitude  of  her 
people,  98 ;  Why  the 
World  Sympathizes  with, 
Chapter  IV,  99 ;  small 
area  and  population  of, 
99 ;  intensive  agriculture 
of,  100  ;  social  and  indus- 
trial conditions,  101 ;  man- 
ufactures, 102 ;  courts,  sav- 
ings banks,  103;  inherited 
bravery  of  people,  104 ; 
plains  of,  Europe's  battle- 
ground, 104,  105  ;  mari- 
ners and  wealth  of,  in 
1568,106;  Alva  sent  from 
Spain  to  despoil,  107;  mis- 
eries endured  by,  108- 
HO;  refugees  from  joined 
Dutch  in  cutting  dykes, 
1 10  ;  Egmont  and  Horn 
heroes  of,  111-113;  new 
miseries  of,  at  Germany's 
hand,  1 14 ;  guaranteed 
neutrality  broken,  1 14 ; 
resources  of,  116;  at- 
tacked by  Germany,  172 

"  Belgium  of  the  Belgians," 
quoted,  98 

Bereshkovsky,  Madame,  131 

Berlin,  55 

Bernhardi,  General,  quoted, 

25,  39,  92,  173 
Bethlehem,  150 
Bismarck,  40,  47,  149,  170- 

172,  241,  243 
Black  Sea,  175 


Bliss,  Howard,  in  Beirut,  158 
Borneo,  195 

Bosphorus,  The,  148,  175 
Boulger,      Demetrius      C., 

quoted,  98 
Bremen,  22 
Briey  iron  deposits,  50 
British  Guiana,  84  ;  Guinea, 

83 

Brooklyn,  N.  Y.,  56 
Bruce,  Robert,  198 
Brussels,  115 
Budapest,  25,  173 
Burke,     Edmund,     quoted, 

'56 

Burmah,  77 

Byron,  apostrophe  to  Greece, 

153;  to  Rome,  163 
Byzantine  Empire,  145 
Byzantium,  221 

C/ESAR,   JULIUS,    104,   105, 

i 66,  167 

Cain,  a  national  type  ?  179 
Cairo,  150 
Calcutta,  155 
Calhoun,  John  C.,  13 
Calvin,  John,  69 
Canada,  51,  77,  79,  84 
Canal  project  in  Palestine, 

'55 

Canning,  Earl,  83 

Caprera,  185 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  144,  181, 
223 

Carthage,  165,  168 

Catherine  the  Great,  of  Rus- 
sia, 124,  126 

Causes  and  occasions  of 
war,  13-15 

Cavour,  183,  184 

Celts,  104 

Cesaresco,  Countess,  quoted, 

'85.  233 


264 


Index 


Ceylon,  77 

Champs  Elyse'es,  Paris,  57 

Charles  Martel,  104,  145 

Chicago,  fire,  143  ;  World's 
Fair,  199 

China,  1 20 

Clive,  Lord,  83 

Cobden,  Richard,  80 

Cockerill  Iron  Works,  Bel- 
gium, IO2 

Coligny,  Admiral,  206 

Colonies,  of  European  na- 
tions, 49,  78 

Columbus,  167,  199,  201 

Constance,  Council  of,  228 

Constantine,  167 

Constantinople,  capital  of 
Turkey,  seat  of  Caliphate, 
141  ;  beauty  and  impor- 
tance, 142 ;  taken  by 
Turks  in  1453,  148 ;  en- 
dangered in  present  war, 
142,  151,  160,  221 

Cortez,  109 

Council,  of  Trent,  203 ; 
Constance,  228 

Crag-Jurgensen  rifle,  135 

Crawford,  F.  Marion,  quoted, 
164 

Croesus,  64 

Cromer,  Lord,  91 

Cromwell,  1 6,  74,  1 2 1,  127, 
198,  242 

Curie,  Prof,  and  Madame,  69 

Curzon,  Lord,  83,  91 

Daily      Eagle,     Brooklyn, 

N.  Y.,  7 
Damascus,  150 
Dante,  167,  198 
Dardanelles,  172,  175 
Darwin,  Charles,  75 
David,  99,  121,  198,  205 
Dead  Sea,  155 


Deak,  Ferencz,  Hungarian 
diplomat,  231 

De  Grasse,  Count,  68 

Delcasse,  French  Foreign 
Minister,  47 

De  Lesseps  (Suez  and  Pana- 
ma), 69 

Delfthaven,  191 

Deltas  of  the  Nile,  Amazon, 
Mississippi,  Rhine,  194 

Dilke,  Sir  Charles,  76 

Disraeli,  146 

Dufferin,  Lord,  83 

Duma,  the  Russian,  133 

ECOLK  DES  BEAUX  ARTS,  60 
Egmont,    Count,    111-113, 

203,  206 

Egypt,  148,  150,  155 
Elbe  River,  22 
Eliot,  John,  English  patriot, 

"3 

Ellis  Island,  Austrian  immi- 
grants at,  235 

Emperor,  Charles  V.,  106, 
198;  Constantine,  221  ; 
Francis  Joseph,  24,  174, 
222 ;  Sigismund,  227 

Empress  Maria  Theresa, 
223,  224 

England,  her  cause  for  war, 
15  ;  compared  with  Ger- 
many, 24-31 ;  Place  of, 
Among  Nations,  Chapter 
III,  73;  supremacy  of, 
74 ;  as  architect  of  states, 
75-79  ;  colonies  of,  80  ; 
fine  civil  service  of,  82 ; 
incorruptible  colonial 
courts,  83 ;  swift  justice, 
84 ;  mounted  police  of 
Canada,  84;  colonization 
drains  population  of,  85  ; 
shipping  and  commerce 


265 


Index 


of,  87,  88;  fairness  to 
commercial  rivals,  88 ; 
House  of  Lords,  89-91  ; 
resources  of,  95 ;  land 
question  in,  127;  in 
Triple  Entente,  171,  172  ; 
distressed  by  closing  of 
Dardanelles  in  Italo-Turk- 
ish  war,  174-176;  now 
likely  to  guard  Suez  and 
threaten  Dardanelles,  1 60 

Ephesus,  150,  1 68 

Epictetus,  167 

Epicurean  philosophers,  146 

Erasmus,  192 

Eser  River,  22 

Euphrates  River,  154 

"  Europe  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century,"  quoted,  216 

FAUBOURG  ST.  ANTOINE, 
Paris,  6 1 

Fichte,  12 

Florida,  1 66 

Foreword,  5-7 

Fort  Sumter,  13 

France,  character  of  people, 
44;  Contribution  to  the 
World,  Object  of  Fight- 
ing, Chapter  II,  45 ;  open- 
ing of  present  war,  45  ; 
high-water-mark  of  Ger- 
man attack,  46 ;  stability 
of  government,  46 ;  states- 
men of,  undoing  Bis- 
marck's work,  47-49 ; 
iron  ores  of,  49-51  ;  new 
financial  policy,  51-53; 
diffusion  of  the  beautiful, 
53  ff. ;  Napoleon  III.  and 
beautification  of  Paris, 
56-58 ;  art  advancement 
by  government  of,  59- 
63  ;  financial  returns  from 


art,  65  ;  debt  of  America 
to,   68-69  5   resources  of, 
70;  land  question  in,  128 
Francis  Joseph,  of  Austria- 
Hungary,  24,  174,  222 
Francis  II.,  of  Austria,  221 
Franklin,  Benjamin,  68 
Frederick  the  Great,  40,  86, 

93,  223-226,  241 
Freeman,     Edward     A., 

quoted,  140 

French   Directory  and   Na- 
poleon, 156 
Froude,  James  A.,  181 
Fullerton,  William  Morton, 
quoted,  49-51 

GALILEO,  167 

Garibaldi,  181-183 

Gates,  Dr.,  of  Robert  Col- 
lege, 158 

Gauss,  Prof.  Christian,  240 

German  isolation  of  France 
reversed,  48 ;  colonies 
few,  49  ;  envy  of  French 
iron  deposits,  49-5 1 ;  war 
preparation,  86;  violation 
of  Belgium's  guaranteed 
neutrality,  113;  cruelty 
in  Belgium,  1 14  ;  justified 
by  Von  Disfurth,  178 

Germany,  Old  and  New, 
12 ;  Growth  of,  Chapter  I, 
13 ;  causes  and  occasions 
of  present  war,  13-15 ; 
leads  world  in  industry, 
trade  and  commerce,  16, 
17  ;  army  and  navy,  18, 
19 ;  population,  20 ;  shut 
from  sea,  22,  23 ;  foreign- 
ers imported  for  harvest 
work,  23;  room  needed 
to  expand,  24 ;  wealth, 
work,  debt,  25,  26;  in- 


266 


Index 


vestments,  savings,  27, 
28 ;  beggary  abolished, 
30 ;  influence  of  Kaiser, 
31-33 ;  Navy  League,  34 ; 
military  education,  35— 
37 ;  attack  on  Belgium, 
38;  readiness  for  war, 
40;  resources,  41;  mili- 
tarism in,  86 ;  only  nation 
ready  for  the  war,  92 ;  Bis- 
marck's policies  for,  in  Eu- 
rope, 170-172;  with  Aus- 
tria began  war,  172 ;  justi- 
fied by  Von  Disfurth,  178 ; 
andHolland,  195, 196,212 

Gettysburg,  46,  136,  259 

Gibraltar,  94 

Goethe,  12 

Grand  Palais,  Petit  Palais, 
Paris,  63 

Grand  Prix  de  Rome,  60 

Greece,  struggling  to  escape 
from  Turkey,  152,  153; 
the  Isles  of,  153;  under 
Turkey,  and  now,  154; 
^Egean  islands,  154 

Griffis,  Wm.  Elliott,  quoted, 
211 

Grote,  George,  181 

Grotius,  Belgian  jurist,  115 

Gustavus  Adolphus,  123 

HAGUE,  THE,  193,  199 
Hamburg,  22,  196 
Hamlin,  Cyrus,  157 
Hampden,  John,  74 
Harmsworth,   Alfred,  Lord 

Northcliffe,  91 
Harpigny,  painter,  64 
Hawthorne,  74,  1 68 
Haydn,  12,  227 
Hegel,  12 
Hejira,  the,  147 
Holland,  colonial  possessions 


of,  190 ;  and  Germany : 
The  Mouth  of  the  Rhine, 
Chapter  VIII,  191  ;  in- 
debtedness of  America  to, 
191,  192;  smallness  of, 
193;  rich  farming  lands 
of,  194 ;  colonial  riches 
of,  195 ;  mouth  of  the 
Rhine  held  by,  196 ;  sea- 
dykes  creating  land  for, 
197;  commerce  and 
wealth  of,  202 ;  William 
the  Silent  hero  of,  197- 
211 ;  refugees  from  Flan- 
ders to,  204  ;  "  Request  " 
to  Regent  by  noblemen 
of,  205  ;  "  Beggars  of  the 
Sea,"  206 ;  Coligny  slain 
in  Paris,  Neearven  des- 
troyed, Spain's  overtures 
for  peace,  William's  re- 
ply, 207  ;  Leyden  be- 
sieged, dykes  cut,  208 ; 
"  Seven  United  Prov- 
inces "  organized,  208 ; 
William  slain,  209 ;  es- 
tates stood  firm,  210; 
peace,  recognition  of  in- 
dependence by  Spain, 
211;  rulers  of  Nether- 
lands, 212;  Germany  and, 
212  ;  resources  of,  213 

Holy  Roman  Empire,  221 

Holy  War,  A,  ordered  by 
Turkey,  141,  151 

Homer,  150 

Horatius,  121 

Horn,  Count,  in,  203,  206 

House  of  Commons,  British, 
79,  89-91 

House  of  Lords,  British,  89- 

91 

Hudson  River,  23 
Huguenots  of  France,  206 


267 


Index 


Hungary,  25  ;  mediaeval  and 
modern,  Kingdom  in  Dual 
Empire,  228-231 

Huss,  John,  227,  234 

INDIA,  77,  79,  81 

Indian  Ocean,  175 

Inquisition,  The,  108 

Isaiah,  146 

Islam,  meaning  of,  151 

Istria,  232 

Italia  Irredenta,  173,  233 

Italian  Tyrol,  232 

Italy  :  Old  and  New,  Chap- 
ter VII,  161  ;  source  of 
great  ideals,  164 ;  build- 
ers of, — Scipio  Africanus, 
165  ;  Caesar,  166  ;  great 
Romans,  167;  the  New, 
development  of,  169  ;  in- 
dependence of  Triple  Al- 
liance, 170;  Bismarck's 
operations  with,  170-172; 
unity  of,  173;  possible 
opportunity  for,  in  present 
war,  174;  relations  of, 
with  Turkey,  175  ;  clos- 
ing of  Dardanelles  against, 
distressed  world  com- 
merce, 175-177;  builders 
of  the  New, — Mazzini, 
Garibaldi,  Cavour,  180- 
184;  new  economic  move- 
ment in,  185  ;  land  ques- 
tion and  taxes  in,  186; 
democracy  and  autocracy 
in,  187  ;  present  influence 
of,  1 88;  resources  of, 
1 88  ;  popular  agitation  for 
war  in,  234 

Italy    of    the     Italians," 
quoted,  162 


JAVA, 195 


y avert,  Hugo's,  131 

Jean  Paul,  12 

Jerrold,   Lawrence,  quoted, 

44 

Jerusalem,  150 
Jesus,  timely  preacher,  6 
Jews,  The,  in  Spain,  108 
Jordan,  150 
Joshua,  165 
Judson,  Harry  Pratt,  quoted, 

216 

KAISER,  The,  16,  31-35, 
48,  78,  88,  92,  169,  172, 
240 

Kiel  Canal,  151 

King,  Clovis,  104  ;  Edward 
VII.,  82;  Ferdinand  of 
Naples  and  Sicily,  180 ; 
James  I.,  of  England, 
191  ;  William  of  Prussia, 
German  Emperor,  170; 
Philip  II.,  of  Spain,  106, 
199,  20 1-2 I i 

Kossuth,  Louis,  229-231 

Koran,  The,  147,  150,  151 

LAFAYETTE,  68,  113 
Lake  of  Galilee,  155 
"  L'Allemagne  aux  Abois," 

51 

Land  question  in  Russia, 
England,  France,  Mexico, 
127,  128 

Lansdowne,  Lord,  175 

Lawrence,  Lord,  83 

Lenau,  12 

Lessing,  12 

Lewes,  George  H.,  181 

Leyden,  207 

"  Liberation  of  Italy,  The," 
quoted,  185,  233 

Liege,  102 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  217 


268 


Index 


Liszt,  227 

Little  States  in  history,  193 

Liverpool,  176 

Lombard  Street,  London,  73 

London,  55,   73,   122,    155, 

163 

Lorenzo     the    Magnificent, 

227 
Lorraine    and    Alsace,   47, 

170 

Louisiana,  194 
Louvain,  41,  115 
Lucretius,  167 
Luxembourg,  gallery  of,  60 

MACAULAY,  THOMAS  B., 
181 

Mayflower,  The,  192 

MacMonnies'  Arch,  56 

Maine  to  Puget  Sound,  119 

Manchester,  55 

Manhattan  Island,  23 

Manitoba,  79 

Marcus  Aurelius,  167 

Margaret  of  Parma,  Regent 
of  the  Netherlands,  203 

Maria  Theresa,  224-226 

Marie  Antoinette,  14 

Marseilles,  22 

Mazzini,  iSo,  181 

McGill  University,  Mon- 
treal, 8 1 

Mecca,  146 

Medina,  147 

Mediterranean  Sea,  24 

Melbourne,  79 

Mennonites,  The,  131 

Mexico,  23,  51,  94,  128 

Miami  River,  59 

Michael  Angelo,  168 

Militarism  and  Autocracy, 
American  Verdict  upon, 
Chapter  X,  239-262 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  181 


Millet,  painter,  65 

Milton,  quoted,  72 

Mississippi  River,  23,  59, 
194 

Modern  Germany,  12 

Mohammed,  Carlylc's  opin- 
ion of  corrected,  143  ;  ca- 
reer of,  146-148 

Mohammedans,  141 ;  after 
Prophet's  death,  148;  uni- 
versity of,  in  Cairo,  1 50  ; 
symbol  of,  a  waning  cres- 
cent, 152 

Moors,  The,  in  Spain,  108 

Moses,  121,  146 

Moslems  (see  Mohammedans) 

Mosque  of  St.  Sophia,  142 

Motley,  John  L  o  t  h  r  o  p, 
quoted,  197,  210 

Mottoes,  national,  20,  21 

Mounted  police,  Canada,  84 

Mozart,  12,  227 

Mukden,  135 

Munich,  23 

NAMUR  iron  deposits,  5 1 

Napoleon,  105,  134,  156, 
171,  174,  231,  241,  243, 
259 

Napoleon  III.,  beautifies 
Paris,  55-58 

Navy,  German,  34,  35 

Neearven,  207 

Netherlands,  The  (see  Hol- 
land) 

New  Orleans,  23 

Newton,  Isaac,  75 

New  York,  66-67,  182,  192 

New  Zealand,  77 

"  Night  Watch,  The,"  193 

Nile  River,  194 

North  Africa,  145 

North  American  Review, 
cited,  247 


269 


Index 


Northcliffe,  Lord,  91 
Notre  Dame,  Paris,  58 
Nuremberg,  106 

ONTARIO,  79 

PAINTED  LADY,  The,  109 

Palestine,  151,  193 

Panama  Canal,  69,  94,  IO2, 
176,  177 

Pan-Slavic  union,  216 

Paris  leads  the  world  in 
beauty,  55  ;  beautified  by 
Napoleon  III.,  56-58 

Pascal's  "  Thoughts,"  69 

Pasteur,  69 

Persia,  controlled  by  Eng- 
land and  Russia,  154; 
railroad  to,  154 

Persian  Gulf,  151,  154 

Peshkoff,  Russian  noble- 
man, 132 

Petrograd,  54 

Philistines,  165 

Phillips,  Wendell,  181 

Piedmont,  1 80 

Plato,  13 

Plehve,  Russian  despotic 
minister,  130 

Plymouth  Church,  182 

Poincare,  Jules  H.,  French 
mathematician,  President 
of  France,  47 

Ponce  de  Leon,  166 

Pope  Pius  IX.,  1 80 

Port  Arthur,  135 

"  Problems  of  P  o  w  e  r," 
quoted,  49 

Prussia,  16,  94,  223-226 

Pym,  John,  74,  198 


QUEEN,  ALEXANDRA,  of 
England,  82;  Elizabeth 
of  England,  191,  224; 


Isabella  of  Spain,  199 ; 
Marie  Antoinette  of 
France,  14;  Maria 
Theresa  of  Austria,  224  ; 
Mary  of  England,  191  ; 
Victoria,  222;  Wilhelmina 
of  Holland,  195,  212 

RAPHAEL,  168 

"  Real  France,  The,"  44 

Red  Sea,  155 

Reichstag,  German,  a  de- 
bating society,  16 

Rembrandt,  193 

Revolution,  American,  13, 
218;  French,  14;  Greek, 
152;  Balkan,  218 

Rhine  River,  22,  172,  194, 
196,  212 

Rhone  River,  23,  172 

"  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Repub- 
lic," quoted,  197,  210 

Robert  College,  158 

Robinson,  John,  192 

Rocky  Mountains,  194 

Rodin,  sculptor,  64 

Roentgen,  Professor,  32 

Romanoffs  of  Russia,  126 

Rome,  73,  119;  Byron's 
apostrophe  to,  163;  long 
world  leadership  of,  163 ; 
Crawford's  apostrophe  to, 
164 ;  in  antiquity  and 
Middle  Ages,  165-168 

Rostand,  poet,  64 

Rotterdam,  22, 191, 193, 196 

Russia,  and  the  Bosphorus, 
15;  people  of,  118;  the 
New,  Chapter  V,  119; 
vastness,  120;  Peter  the 
Great,  121-126;  Cather- 
ine, 124,  126;  Alexander 
II.,  127  ;  land  question, 
127;  Mir  system,  128; 


27O 


Index 


oppression,  130-132; 
Duma,  133;  soldier  -of, 
134;  the  New,  134;  ma- 
terial means  of,  135; 
democracy  in,  136;  re- 
sources of,  136 

ST.  BARTHOLOMEW,  206 

St.  Petersburg  founded,  124 

Salisbury  Plain,  81 

San  Francisco,  54 

Sappho,  150 

Saracens,  104,  149 

Sardinia,  173 

Sarre,  Valley  of  the,  50 

Savonarola,  227 

Schiller,  12 

Schlegel,  12 

Scipio  Africanus,  165,  1 66 

Seine  River,  23 

Serbia,  93,  172 

Seven  cities  of  Paul's 
churches,  150 

Sevres  porcelain,  62 

Seward,  Wm.  H.,  217 

Shakespeare,  75 

Siberia,  120 

Sicily,  173 

Silesia,  50 ;  stolen  by  Fred- 
erick, 93,  223,  224 

Sobieski,  John,  145 

Socrates,  165 

South  Africa,  51,  76,  79 

South  Sea  Islands,  83 

Spain,  145,  149,  166 

Spanish  cruelty  in  Spain, 
108;  Mexico,  109,  200; 
Peru,  200  ;  Belgium,  106- 
113;  Holland,  201-211 

Speedwell,  The,  192 

Staten  Island,  182 

Steel,  King,  in  Twentieth 
Century,  93 

Stephenson,  George,  75 


Straits,  used  by  world  com- 
merce, not  to  be  closed 
for  local  warlike  opera- 
tions, 176,  177 

Suez  Canal,  69,  94,  175 

Sumatra,  195 

Sweden,  soldiers  of,  123, 124 

Switzerland,  193 

Syria,  148,  166 

TAFT,  WILLIAM  H.,  quoted, 
176 

"  Take  what  you  want ;  ex- 
plain later,"  93 

Tammany  Hall,  as  patron 
of  art,  66 

Thebes,  73 

"  The  Day,"  93 

Tiber  River,  166 

Tolstoi,  Count,  131 

Treaties,  to  be  kept  or 
sneered  at?  179 

Treitschke,  German  histo- 
rian, cited,  80,  246 

Trent,  Council  of,  203 

Trentino,  173,  232 

Trieste,  22,  173,  232 

Triple  Alliance  (Germany, 
Austria  and  Italy),  172 

Triple  Entente  (France, 
Russia  and  England),  17 1, 
172 

Tripoli,  175 

Turgot,  French  statesman, 
78 

Turkestan,  120 

Turk,  The  Unspeakable, 
Chapter  VI,  139;  an  alien 
in  Europe,  140;  enters 
present  struggle,  orders 
Holy  War,  141 ;  numbers 
of,  141  ;  permanent  hold 
in  Europe,  148 ;  depres- 
sion in  realms  of,  149, 150; 


271 


Index 


polygamy  and  slavery 
under,  151  ;  alliance  with 
Austria  and  Germany, 
151  ;  Greece  oppressed 
by  and  freed  from,  152- 
154  ;  hope  for  Asia  Minor 
in  fall  of,  154;  commer- 
cial projects  through  lands 
of,  155,  156;  the  Young, 
and  new  dreams,  157; 
American  education  in 
lands  of,  well  treated  by, 
158;  Suez  Canal  endan- 
gered by,  159;  Darda- 
nelles a  danger  to,  159 

Turkey  (see  Turk) 

Tyndale,  William,  132,  192 

Tyrol,  Italian,  232 

UGANDA  RIVER,  76 

Uhland,  12 

United  States  of  Great  Brit- 
ain, 79,  80;  of  Balkany, 
218 

University  Magazine,  Can- 
ada, 8 1 

Utrecht,  198 

VATICAN  gallery,  166 
Venice,   73,   87,    106,    173, 

193,  232 

Versailles,  68,  170 
Victor  Emmanuel,  175,  183 
Victor  Hugo,  131 


Vienna,  145 

Virgil,  167 

Von    Disfurth,    General, 

quoted,  177 
Von  Moltke,  General,  170 

WALDENSES,  The,  132 

Washington,  121 ;  city  of, 
230 

Waterloo,  174 

Watt,  James,  75 

Webster,  Daniel,  13,77, 152 

Wellington,  105,  174 

West,  Dr.,  American  physi- 
cian in  Turkey,  158 

Westphalia  steel,  50 

Wheat  lands  of  Russia,  120 

Wieland,  12 

William  II.  (see  Kaiser) 

William  the  Silent,  Prince 
of  Orange,  197-211 

Winnipeg,  79 

XENOPHON,  150 

Y.    M.   C.   A.    building  in 

St.  Petersburg,  133 
Young  Turks,  The,  157 

ZEALAND, 198 

Zimmern,     Helen,    quoted, 

162 
Zuyder  Zee,  207 


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